“Silence.” They fell silent at once. Feather Cloak did not rise from her stone seat. Her crossed legs cradled her huge belly, which was half concealed by the stone eagle’s head thrusting up from the floor. The feather cloak pooled over the wings of the bird, giving the woman the appearance of a creature both humanlike and avian. Under her light shift, her breasts were swollen in the way of pregnant women, round and full, and Liath was struck by such a sharp jab of envy that she had to blink back tears.
Where was Blessing now? Who was caring for her?
Feather Cloak curved a hand around her belly. “Remember that this child will be the first born on Earth since our exile. Shall it be born to know only war, or to know peace as well?”
“You have taken the Impatient One’s counsel to heart!” snarled Cat Mask. “She threw away her loyalty to her own people to go walking among humankind. You know what she did there!”
“You are only angry that she tossed your spear out of her house!” cried another young man, laughing unkindly after he spoke. He wore a mask carved in the shape of a lizard’s head, elaborated with a curly snout. “Very proud you are of that spear, and it galls you to think that another man—not just another man but a human man might have been allowed to bring his spear into her house!”
This insult triggered a flurry of mocking laughter among some of the others and a clash, like rams locking horns, between the two men that was only halted when a stout older man stepped between them.
Dressed more conservatively than the other men, with his chest covered by a tunic in the manner of the women, he made for an unsettling sight with a necklace of mandibles hanging at his chest and earrings fashioned to resemble tiny skulls dangling from either ear.
“The Impatient One chose negotiation over war.” With a single finger on the chest of each of the young men, he pushed them apart as though they weighed no more than a child.
“We cannot negotiate with humankind,” objected White Feather.
“What do you mean us to do?” asked an elderly woman in a deceptively sweet voice. “We have dwindled. How many children are left to us, and how many among us remain capable even of bearing or siring a child? Where once our tribes filled cities, now we eke out a living in the hills, on the dying fields. If there is one left where ten stood before, then I am counting generously. We will be weak when we stand on Earth once more. We must seek accommodation.”
Cat Mask gave a barking laugh of disgust. “Accommodation is for fools! We have enough power to defeat them, even if we are few and they are many.”
“So speaks the Impulsive One,” retorted the old woman. She had a scar on her left cheek, very like a wound taken in battle. Her short tunic ended at her waist and below that she wore a ragged skirt, much repaired, striped with rows of green beads. Little white masks, all of them grinning skull faces, hung from her belt. “I ask you, The-One-Who-Sits-In-The-Eagle-Seat, let the human woman walk forward and speak to us. I, for one, would hear what she has to say.”
“Come forward,” said Feather Cloak.
Liath walked forward cautiously. The council members moved as she walked, shifting position so that they stood neither too close nor too far, yet always able to see her face.
“Stand before me.” Feather Cloak looked serious but not antagonistic. Liath felt it safe to obey her, under the circumstances. “Closer. There.” Closing her eyes, Feather Cloak rested a hand on Liath’s hip. The touch was probing without being intrusive. Even through her tunic, Liath felt the cool smoothness of her hand, almost as if it melted into her.
And she was thrown, abruptly, into the trance she had learned from Eldest Uncle. She slid into it without warning, into that place where the architecture of existence dissolves into view. Dust motes dance, surrounded by empty space, yet those motes are arranged in perfect order, a latticework of being that in its parts makes up all of her and yet, because it is invisible to the naked eye, seems to be nothing of what she actually is. In her mind’s eye, the city of memory bloomed into view, on the hill, on the lake, and at its core burned the blue-white fire that consumes mountains—
Feather Cloak jerked back with a gasp as her eyelids snapped open. “She is not what she seems! More than one essence weaves itself within her.” Her gaze flashed past Liath to Eldest Uncle.
“There is even something of you in her, Eldest Uncle. How can this be so?”
He merely shrugged.
“So often you refuse to answer me!” But Feather Cloak’s frown seemed born as much of resigned amusement as irritation. Given the advanced stage of her pregnancy, Liath could well imagine that the Aoi woman might simply be exhausted. She spoke again to Liath. “So, then, You-Who-Have-More-Than-One-Seeming, why have you come here?”