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“I am not accustomed to this,” said Feather Cloak to her companion, White Feather, who was walking alongside the litter carrying one of the infants in a drop-back sling.
“No, neither am I,” said White Feather.
“All the blood knives were gone by the time I was born.”
“Yes,” agreed White Feather with a flutter of her lips that resembled a grim smile. It was as much as she ever said on the matter. “So they were.”
For the past two days they had been walking through an area of dispersed settlements, most of them lying off the main road. Now, as the raised roadway curved around a field of sap cactus, they came into a community abandoned during the exile but repopulated over the winter by those who had returned from the shadows. A large residence was raised on an earth platform. Small houses were set in groups around central patios. A remarkable number of people came out to greet them, more bundles than she could estimate easily. She could not get used to the crowds. They had no doubt been alerted to her arrival by the runners sent ahead to announce the procession.
Those in the back of the crowd craned their necks to get a glimpse of her. These were all folk who had returned from the shadows. They stood differently, wore their hair differently, tilted their chins differently, and they hadn’t the stick-thin wiriness common to those who had survived exile, who had never ever in their lives gotten enough to eat except now in the days of the return when the exiles wallowed in the riches that those returned from the shadows called dearth.
“We’ll stop here for the night,” she said, suddenly wanting to talk to the ones gathered here, who stared at her but kept silent for fear of their voices polluting her.
The blood knives began to protest that they were less than a third of a day’s journey from the city on the lake, enough to make it by nightfall, but already the men who carried her heeded her command and bore her up to the residence while householders scattered to make room. The chief of the town was a man and a woman. Despite both being of middle years, they were newly married to judge by the blackened remains of wedding torches stuck in the ground on either side of the residence gateway.
They welcomed her easily, and with an efficient manner born of practice. A mat was brought and placed on the chief’s seat. Here she settled, relieved to be out of the sway and lurch of the litter. The blood knives swarmed, always wanting to control her least action, but White Feather swept them out ruthlessly so that Feather Cloak could nurse the babies.
After this, the chief brought sharp beer and sweet cactus fruit, gruel, toasted grubs, and fowl dressed in wild herbs and sweetened with sap. She still could not get used to the sight of so much food. Yet when at last she addressed the chief to thank them for the food, they apologized for the impoverished feast, which they said was nothing compared to what was due to her eminence.
“Let me speak to your council to hear how life goes for you here,” she said.
The council was called hastily, elders, folk who had distinguished themselves, someone to represent each clan.
“We have no Rabbit Clan in our town,” said the chief. “Nor Lizard Clan.”
The blood knives stirred. “None out of the Rabbit Clan survived in exile,” they said. “No one kept their House, as is proper.”
Folk whispered, looking frightened. It was a dangerous thing to let the world slip out of balance.
“But there were so many before,” said the lady chief. “We were the few, who walked out into the barbarian lands. Those who remained behind to tend to the land were multitudes. Yet now we are the many, and you, those who came out of exile, are the few.”
White Feather seemed about to speak angry words, so Feather Cloak raised a hand, and all fell silent.
“The tale of our time in exile has already been told.” She looked directly at the blood knives. “Has an almanac yet been painted to record the tale of our struggle?”
“We have much ordering to do, to restore the Houses and the lines and the proper measure of tribute. We must recover and restore the ritual almanacs first.”
“I would not like to see the tale lost,” she said mildly, but as a warning. Let them chew on that! She gestured to the council, inviting them to speak. “Is this the town you came from originally?”
They told their stories. The husband chief had been born here, even if raised in the barbarian lands. He had come to this home, because it was the only one he knew. A scattering of people who had claims that allowed them to labor in the surrounding lands had brought in other unlanded folk. Mostly, people worked the fields, but despite this, the community was sparsely settled compared to the days before exile.
“Not enough men to clear the fields,” complained the lady chief. “We women are behind on our tribute offers of cloth. We can’t harvest the fiber quickly enough. The fields are still green. We have no thread for weaving.”
“What is your measure of tribute?” Feather Cloak asked them.
The list, reeled off from memory, seemed to her a staggering sum: feathers, paper, cloth in the form of short capes, incense from the smoke tree, and a range of agricultural goods for the temple and palace in the nearby city. But of course the birds were gone, the trees dead and any new growth yet seedlings, and the fields only newly sprouted with what little seed those who had survived the shadows had carried with them.
“The tribute lists must be redrawn,” said Feather Cloak, as she said every day. “Until the people are healthy and the granaries are full, until there is seed corn in plenty, we must put all our effort into restoring our fields and our population.”
“Tribute is necessary to maintain the universe,” said the blood knives, as they said every day. “To keep the balance, we must pray, we must bleed, we must keep our oaths, burn incense, and offer sacrifices.”
“So it must be done,” she agreed, “but not to the measure in the days before exile, or we will be drained dry again!”
“All your blood knives are dead,” they said, coming back to this point as they did every day. “It is no wonder the land was drained dry, that the balance was lost.”
“You know nothing!” cried White Feather.
“Silence!” said Feather Cloak, and they gave her silence.
