Part 35 (1/2)
”I already have duties-” She broke off. Moons, what made her say that?
”Ah, yes, the duties.”
”Moonworms, stop ah-ing as if you understand.” She started to rein away, then paused and looked back over her shoulder. ”One more thing.”
”Yes?”
”Touch me-kiss me-again without my permission, and I'll cut your lips from your bones and feed them to the wolf pack.”
She spurred her dnu ahead.
The Tamrani rubbed his square jaw and watched her ride off to pace another wagon. ”You have no idea,” he murmured, ”how that challenges a man.”
He rubbed the thin st.i.tches on his belt. There had been a particular tone in Nori's voice when she'd spoken of duties, a tone under her anger, and she'd looked at his belt again. She had been anxious, perhaps even afraid, and it had not been his imagination. He didn't think it had to do with the accidents in the train, either. She'd been too calm when they had discussed them, and she hadn't hesitated when facing Brean or dealing with the tano. No, there was something else that worried the wolfwalker, and it was that which worried him. He wanted a scout who was focused on her duty. He couldn't risk his family's lives on someone so caught up in other things that she'd be no use to him. He fingered the belt and watched with a frown as she rode ahead at a canter.
That evening, no one lingered at dinner, and fireside was a jumble of unease. It was crowded, too, and not just from the other three cozar trains who had to share the circle. Almost every cozar from Ell Tai's train was there at Trial, including children andchovas. Lookers-on from the village had ridden in, along with locals and messengers. It wasn't often one saw a full cozar trial, and this would be severe. Tai had had to borrow four elders from the other caravans to make up the panel of judges.
A line of elders made up one half of the innermost circle of the stone amphitheater. The judges ringed the other half. Mian's advocate, the old Ell himself, sat in the midst of the elders, with the girl silent beside him. Nori watched Fentris frown at the tight ring of men and women. He was across fireside from Hunter, ignoring the taller man while trying to check out the cozar. The wolfwalker hid a wry smile. She understood his confusion. If she hadn't known who the elders were herself, Tai and the others would have looked like just more white-haired men and women nodding off at fireside. They wore little to indicate rank. Ell Tai wore just a thin braid of brown, almost invisible on his worn cuff. It was a standard joke that a Hafell was known by the cuff that had no braid. Even the judges wore no robes, only simple stoles with small, heavy metal pins of the oldEarth scales of justice. It was a reminder that they were not above the law themselves, and that the weight of law was a burden, a responsibility, not a power to be used for themselves. They were not G.o.ds who pa.s.sed judgment from the cold distance of legal words, but members in a community who struggled to keep it intact for every one of their folk.
Nori wondered how welcome she would be if they knew she was linked to the enemy of the Ancients, the ones who had pa.s.sed judgment on all humanity and then had sent the plague. She felt an echo of the dread she'd felt years before when she herself had stood Trial.
It had started with a chance meeting of a scout who had seemed simply friendly. Then the man started turning up, watching Nori at the university, following her to cla.s.ses. To her relief, he'd disappeared for a while, but then he'd returned, this time trying to get her alone. When he'd tried to touch her, she'd backed away. When he'd attacked, she'd struck back hard. Then he'd turned up dead.
Yellow eyes flickered in the back of her head at her thoughts. There was a sense of satisfaction in the gaze of Nori's mother-mother as Nori remembered the Tumuwen elders, and she tried to stifle a chill.
For her, Trial had been an exercise in hiding a truth that could break the counties apart. She remembered every word, every truth she'd swallowed, and her dread as her uncles were questioned.
Yes, Wakje and Weed had noticed the man stalking Nori. No, she had not gone to them for help. Yes, they had warned the man off on their own. The scout had left town, but he had returned. They had seen his a.s.sault, and they'd seen Nori hurt the man badly and nearly destroy herself.
Did the man even get Trial?
Wakje had answered, ”He was taken to the trial block, he spoke for himself, he was sentenced by his peers.”
Nori had tried not to blanch at that, and the elders had looked at Wakje sharply. ”Did you punish him?”
they'd asked.
”No,” he'd said.
But Nori had not imagined the flicker she'd seen in his flat, blue eyes. She knew that look. She had it herself every couple of years when she faced her mother-mother.
”Did you take him into the forest?” The elders had asked.
”No.” Wakje had answered.
”What did you do with him?”
”Nothing.” Wakje's voice had been remarkably expressionless.
”Then how did he die?”
”Looked like worlags to me.”
The elders, dissatisfied, had turned to the other uncle, Weed, but the answers had been the same. Both uncles had been seen in town the night the stalker disappeared, and Nori had been in a coma. The elders had recessed, then called Trial back. Both Weed and Wakje had been sentenced to guard duty one day a ninan for a month. It was a token punishment that had grated on the ex-raiders even as it had relieved them.
Nori remembered waiting for her own sentence, her stomach a cold knot as the elders finally spoke.
Even though she had had nothing to do with the man's actual death, it had been her silence about the stalker that had put her uncles in the position of having to commit violence to keep her from greater harm.
The judgment-that she would work four ninends for the poor, tending to their livestock, another token punishment, since she already volunteered for that duty each month-didn't change the sick fear she'd had of waiting for it to be spoken. She would have had nightmares about Trial for years, but there was something worse in her mind.
The link between Nori and her mother-mother had always been strong, and those yellow eyes had reached into that coma with images even harsher and stronger than usual. After the coma, it took nights of waking with screams on her lips to realize that what she'd been seeing was not solely in her imagination. Nor had it been dreams like the nightmares she'd grown up with.
She had always dreaded sleep. Day or night, she would close her eyes, and in that half-sleep state, when the mind is open to odd connections and to images in the unconscious, she could hear her mother-mother. She could feel the slitted eyes, the icy breath of the sky-chipped mountains, the hatred of humanity that lurked in other birdmen. She saw memories of walls that twisted in on themselves, blasts of light, collapsing heat, and patterns that fractured in coil after coil and disappeared into nothing.
After the coma, there was something else in that nightmare state of sleep. She saw clear, crisp memories from her mother-mother that had nothing to do with the mountains or light or icy winds or patterns. And she could feel a sense of herself in the memory, as if she had tainted her mother-mother's telepathic mind as much as the birdman tainted hers.
For years afterward, she saw her mother-mother each night in nightmare dreams. A white, feathered arrow striking down, tearing the stalker from the callused hands of Wakje and Weed. She looked through slitted, yellow eyes and heard the scout scream in his coa.r.s.e human way as she locked her claws into his shoulders. Saw him clutch at her smooth, scaled legs. Saw him dig in to hang on as she hovered over the worlag pack like a farmer holding a frantic gra.s.shopper over a flock of hungry chickens. The Aiueven's hands had been like her own, and she'd felt the soft squidiness of human flesh pierced by her finger-long talons. She'd felt the stale coverings of leather and cloth as they slipped and tore in her grip.
There had been a futile bite of dull human nails. And then she had released the man, and Nori had watched him fall, fall, tumble and flail in the cold, dark air. And the worlags reaching up with their claws before he hit the ground.
She took a breath and let it out carefully so the cozar wouldn't notice. It had been a terrible risk, for both the Aiueven and for Nori. Since the time of plague, there had been an uneasy truce between humanity and the birdmen, and almost no contact between them. One hint that the birdmen had left their mountains to kill another human, and the counties could rise up in terror of another plague and attack the breeding grounds.
She had always feared the demon inside herself, the taint that erupted with her fear and fury, and which could kill at a single touch. What she dreaded even more was the alien who had defended her daughter-daughter. The taint, the link between the two, could destroy what was left of her world.
Someone jostled her elbow, and she flinched. Then Payne caught her attention with a sharp gesture. She shook off her dread. Someone else had death on their mind. Someone close among the cozar.
She located her uncles, then Kettre and Hunter. The citymen and Sidisportchovas were easy to see.
Almost all of them wore some sort of rank or House symbols. Guild men wore guild signs, Tamrani had their crests, and thechovas pinned the bars of their rank onto their inside collars. Fentris had the most complex knot of all, in silk, of course, not chancloth, and its two-toned iridescence caught the lamplight like luminescent moth wings. She wasn't the only one to notice. The slim Tamrani had just turned to a woman who seemed to be complimenting his fancy war cap. The Tamrani didn't turn a hair as he offered a compliment in return, and the woman preened and fingered the cuff of her cheap blouse where the crest of her trade guild had been unevenly embroidered. He must have asked a question, because the woman launched eagerly into a description of some sort of trade, while on his other side another merchant waited impatiently to interrupt.
The oldest elder finally came forward. People quickly seated themselves, and the crowd quieted as the circle of judges adjusted their stoles.
The old man used a cane to steady himself as he walked, and a girl walked at his elbow with the basket he could no longer carry himself. As the old elder stopped in front of each judge, he reached into the basket, drew out one smooth, red stone, and placed it on the curved table. There would be four stones in front of each judge in the end: black for absolution, green for punishment. White for banishment, red for death.
As the elder set down each smoothly polished, blood-colored stone, he murmured, ”May your judgment be careful, made without self-righteousness, without hubris, without hate, without haste.”
Each judge nodded slightly at the blessing, and did not touch the stone.
The second oldest followed with another basket, setting down a white stone carefully beside each red one. ”May your judgment be tempered,” murmured the white-haired woman. ”Made without whim or caprice, without a.s.sumption, without conspiracy, and without greed for the a.s.sets of others.”
Another, balding elder followed with green stones. He said quietly to each judge, ”May your judgment be balanced, made with humanity in mind, not the letter of the law. May it be made without arrogance, without anger, without a desire for revenge. May it be made with all hands on the scale.”
A fourth elder carried the basket of black stones. ”May your judgment be made without fear for yourself or others, without vanity, without ambition, and without debt. May it hold steady when all truths come to light.”
Now the youngest elder-his hair was still partly grey, not wholly white-came forward. The thin man chalked a black line around the long, curved table in front of the judges. The elder stepped back when he was done and his voice rang in the silence. ”This is the finality of the words that will be spoken, the line that all must cross who pa.s.s judgment on another, the line where trust may be broken or mended, where faith may be broken or restored, where we will be bound by truth and responsibility, not emotion and the flaws of the self. May this line be a mirror each time you speak, here and before the moons.”
The Ell nodded as he finished, and patted Mian's clenched hands. The girl's fingers were white, and she sat like a trapped bird beside him. Nori's jaw tightened. Although she had known several of the judges at her own Trial, they had all seemed like strangers. Stern-faced, flat eyes, watching, weighing, judging her statements and every action she'd taken.
Now Nori glanced at Mian and had to force herself not to rea.s.sure the girl. She looked instead at Payne.