warm hands wet with the blood of fish he had recently hooked. “The girls come our longhouse, meet our women. The boys, with our warriors, the men’s feast. Travel tonight, all men. Travel tonight, all women. Tomorrow all together, meet again.”
“Ah!” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow? And don’t worry. You’ll learn our language soon now that you’re my brother. I’ll teach you.”
They stepped outside the cave under a sky that had gone blue-gray and she walked with Lan toward the Wheel Clan longhouse, admiring its watchtower and its ramparts encircling the longhouse watchtower.
* * * *
Inside the gathering room of the royal longhouse, the Iden and Wheel Clan women feasted. The Iden longhouse always smelled of animal dung and urine, but blood, pharma, sweat, and the odor of corpses pervaded the Nahas longhouse. Even the aroma of sizzling hot spices, fermented meats, honey beverages could not blow away the odor of death. Old Jion had told her of the great Peacock chief’s longhouse, a chief named Tsbosso, whose longhouse had ebony carvings and walls covered with animal skin. She couldn’t imagine it being any lovelier than the interior of a Wheel Clan longhouse, the home of a great king who was to become her father. She placed Eala in her mother’s lap and looked around the gathering room in amazement.
Jion had called the Wheel Clan “the masters of the lathe.” But Maharai had never imagined the perfection and charm that now shone in the Nahas longhouse. The low-lying steps near the hearth on which the women sat: the pegs, grooves, and carvings of decorative bone, ivory, wood, and polished crystal placed neatly in shelves; the woolen hangings; etched trays; wheeled toys; and the tiny swinging cots in which the Wheel Clan babies slept so peacefully.
Lan introduced her to an older woman with long, graying red hair. The woman was sitting beside Ktwala and all the other women surrounded them. “Her name is Donie. We call her ‘Rain,’ in our language. She is much-honored among us.” Lan pointed to a woman with crescent-shaped eyes sitting to Rain’s right. She seemed about the same age of Gidea. “That is Satima, a Waymaker foundling married into our clan. She speaks your language. She will also help you understand our clan.”
“Your men don’t look like your women,” Maharai observed. “Did you steal all these women? And where are your old mothers, and your old fathers? Why is Rain the only old one I see? Does the Wheel Clan kill their old ones to preserve food?”
Lan blinked. “Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“These women all married into our clan at the beginning of the war. As for the old ones, they live in steward longhouses far from trouble.”
“They’re sent away from their home longhouses?”
He squeezed her shoulder gently. “Maharai, I have duties to attend to. Rain will explain all.” He bowed then walked down the corridor to the left.
The old woman had a pale face and kind green eyes. I like her, Maharai thought. But why is this particular old one still here? Shouldn’t she have been sent away like the others? But perhaps she’s the king’s mother and he did not wish to send away his mother.
* * * *
Psal was waiting for his patient—a young warrior rescued from the Orian longhouse—to wake from pharma-induced sleep when Lan entered.
“Firstborn,” Lan said, “the king demands you and Ephan battle by my side.”
“Am I a warrior?” Psal asked. “No, I am not. I will not. The king cannot insist that studiers battle.” A small hearth had been built into the sick rooms as well and now Psal lay his surgical knife on the rectangular white stone in the middle of the red coals. The blood on the knife sizzled away. “Am I—a studier—to harm others? No! I will not do it.”
“A chief should learn to harm others, Firstborn.”
“Take my part, Lan, or cease speaking with me.”
Lan did not immediately answer. He stood near the Studier’s Hearth, staring at the embers. Then, like the glowing stone, his face lit up. “Firstborn, I have an idea. Can you not use the ancient covenant to protect this people?”
Psal grimaced. The Principles always gave him a headache. The Master of the Wintersea had given his students so many possible interpretations of the Creator’s Principles of Reconciliation that Psal hardly knew what they meant. The fact that the spiritual laws hadn’t allowed for a Firstborn not being heir of a clan didn’t exactly make him respect them. “There is nothing in the seven principles about studiers learning to kill.”
“Doesn’t it declare that if a Firstborn marries into a clan, the clan cannot be harmed?”
Lan’s interpretation of the Principles was always exasperatingly muddled. And now—studier’s son that he was—he was reciting them. They rolled from his tongue like a scroll:
To those who would be holy, hear the laws of the Creator:
Let not Samat usurp your pleasures and your sorrows. Guard the doors of your heart against his wiles. Do not allow him to overtake your senses or rule your mind. The Malevolent One lies near and far, in small matters and in large. He roams the world like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Therefore, hear the Creator’s laws and do them:
If you find a night-tossed child, you must by no means leave it bereft but you will take the child into your home and rear it as one of your sons and daughters. You shall in no wise allow Samat to allow you to ignore the poor and the outcast. If you find a foundling marked as outcast, feed him and do not search out the nature of his crimes. Nevertheless, let him not enter your longhouse that his guilt does not defile you. If you meet the poor, you shall give to them all they ask of you, whether thing living or non-living, whether thing tangible or intangible. For the Creator’s eye is upon the orphan and the outcast, and the poor are Children of the Creator as you are;
If you fight your enemy and he falls weak at your feet, you shall in no wise leave him bound at nightfall, no not to living, dead, or non-living thing. You shall in no wise allow Samat to lead you to sin. You shall in any case provide your enemy shelter and leave his feet, torso, and hands unbound. If you fight your enemy and capture his house, and find foundling and the night-tossed living with him, you shall in no wise harm the foundling; the night-tossed is not your enemy. If you find a corpse unburied, you shall in all wise, bury it and not leave the dead uncovered. If you desire to kill, refrain from killing. Nevertheless, if you fight your enemy and he dies, you will cover his body that the land may not be polluted; Your enemy is the Child of the Creator, as you are;
If at any time, the night brings you to a place where you find your enemy’s landmark, you shall in no wise remove it, for other clans are Children of the Creator as you are. You shall in no wise allow Samat to convince you otherwise. If the night tosses you to an unclaimed place, you may reclaim the land by fire, water, or axe. But only that which you can reclaim in a single day shall be yours. All that fire, water, and axe have not claimed within each day shall not be included within your landmark. The land, fire, water and even your strength belong to the Creator and it is He who creates each day and apportions your lot;
You shall in no wise lie with or marry a woman born in the same longhouse as you. Whether your longhouse contains ten or ten thousand, she is your sister, and your daughter, and your aunt, and your mother. If at anytime you war and find among your enemy’s clan a woman your heart longs for, you shall take the woman but for her sake, you shall spare those in her longhouse. You shall ally yourself to them, or you will destroy their crystals that their tower be night-tossed. But you shall not in any wise slay her kinsmen, for your children will be her children and they will rise up against you. The woman shall grieve forty-nine days. Then you shall take her to your bed; If the day brings you a woman, living alone without a clan, if she has no child and desires one, you will give her a child. Nevertheless, in no wise shall you force her to lie with you. Nor will you refuse her request to lie with her. If you desire another man’s woman, refrain from taking her. If you desire another woman’s man, refrain from seducing him. The man and the woman are Children of the Creator, as you are;