Zuangua had brought with him a pair of followers, a tough-looking woman wearing a fox mask and an older man with a merchant’s sash slung around his torso. Fox Mask stood with arms crossed and feet braced aggressively. The merchant sat cross-legged and with a cold stare examined Feather Cloak’s council members as though he would have liked to spit on each one.
“Very well,” he said grudgingly. “It may be impossible to determine.”
“So have we told the sky counters,” murmured Eldest Uncle. “Many times over. But it appears they do not believe us.”
“So it does. That brings us to my second point.” Zuangua raised the next finger beside the little. “What of the priests? No land can survive without order, for we see that it did not. Yet how can it be that every one of the blood knives died?”
None of the elders replied, and most looked at the ground. White Feather’s baby stirred, made restless by the tension, and the infant Green Skirt was holding gave a single, flustered cry before the old woman shushed her gently.
This was a subject no one had ever spoken of, even during exile.
“I wait,” said Zuangua.
Eldest Uncle rubbed his chin. He did not look at the others. “When the famine came, during the first generation, and we died in great numbers, the blood knives offered us no solution, only problems. And when the great sickness came, still they refused to change. They could not count the measure of the sky in that place, but all they spoke of was the way things used to be done. We worship the gods still, and properly, giving of our own blood in tribute, but those who used the power of the blood knife to keep themselves raised high above others are all gone. It is true. They are all gone.”
The merchant coughed, for something in Eldest Uncle’s tone made everyone uncomfortable.
Zuangua frowned. “It is difficult for me to know which of those words I like least, and which I dislike most.” He still held up his hand, and now he raised the middle finger to stand beside little and next. “Three. Two of the twenty clans have vanished from among the exiles.”
“And ten of the remaining clans number less than five bundles in their lineage. Yes. We know how many we lost.”
“How can this be?” The merchant slapped his own chest three times. “I am born into Rabbit Clan. Here in the land I find no house to welcome me!”
“There are others of the Rabbit Clan among those who survived in the shadows,” said Eldest Uncle, “or so I am told.”
“How could you let the clans die?” the man roared.
Eldest Uncle smiled sadly. “How can you know how it felt to watch the people die of hunger and thirst as the land failed? To smell the stench of the sickness that afflicted us? To watch fathers sing the death rites over their only child, and then fall themselves as their strength failed? What do you know of bones left to bleach on the hillside? Hu-ah! What could you have done better than what we did!”
Age gave a man power. Eldest Uncle, as well, was known as a sorcerer. He was a seeker after the grains of truth hidden in the mantle thrown over the universe which most folk call the world, for what most folk call the world is really only the things we can touch and smell and taste and hear and see.
“My apologies,” said the merchant. He set hands on knees and inclined his head, just a pinch, toward the old man. “You must see how it appears to us, to wander in the shadows for so long, watching the Pale Dogs swarm over the Earth we love. To return at last to find our homeland …” He wiped away a tear, and this show of emotion seemed so unforced and genuine that Feather Cloak found her throat choked and her own eyes filling. “It is a land of bones.”
“So it became,” said Eldest Uncle. “So many died. We struggled to stay alive.”
“I am not finished.” Zuangua raised his forefinger, and showed the back of his hand to his brother, to all of them, open now except for the folded thumb. “Four. In the days I remember, the Feathered Cloak rose from the high lineages marked out by the gods from the heirs of Obsidian Snake, who led us over the seas.”
For the first time, he looked at Feather Cloak directly. His regard distracted Feather Cloak for a moment, as it always did. His features were attractive, his bronzed complexion a handsome shade. He wore his long black hair unbound so its glossy fall would dazzle women’s eyes. Yet one might admire in this same fashion Cat Mask and other warriors she had known all her life. There was this difference: Zuangua had the look of a well-made sword already whetted in battle. Compared to him, the others had no shine and no edge.