In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“How can you have complaints?” asked Eldest Uncle in a milder tone, seeming half amused and half exasperated.

Zuangua held up a fist, showing its back to his aged brother.

“One.” He lifted the little finger. “How have so many died? So many! We who walked beyond the White Road to fight the Pale Dogs and protect our homeland were less than a quarter of the people. Coming home, we discover we outnumber you twentyfold! How have so many died? How has the land fallen empty in a span that is no more than your life?”

“A very few among us saw great-grandchildren born,” said Eldest Uncle with the patience of the old. “That is a long time.”

He was not angry, although the accusation was insulting. Even Feather Cloak, normally the most placid of souls, found herself flushed, cheeks hot. She tucked her infant more tightly against her. Those who had returned from the shadows could not possibly understand how precious each child had become. Green Skirt held the other baby with the fond attention of a besotted aunt, although the two women were not related by blood ties. White Feather had her own children to care for; the toddler was sleeping in a sling tied around the older woman’s torso, and the girl was crouched by the wall, arms hugging her knees, eyes closed, rocking slightly on her feet.

“How long?” asked Zuangua. “How many years?”

“We could not count the round of years accurately. We had no sun and no stars by which to measure the calendar.”

o;The blood knives took her from me and sacrificed her. They said I was young, I would have another, and that the blood of this one would save us.

“But my womb was parched. Like the land, it was dying. I had no other child. They sacrificed the only one I bore, and the sacrifice was for nothing. The land died because it was uprooted from Earth through the magic of the human dogs. This reason, and no other. We died, and we had no more children. Don’t you see? The blood knives were wrong. And in the end they died, too.”

She balanced the first child on her thin hip and grasped the wrist of the older girl as well, drawing her close. “I will take these two girls to replace the one I lost. They are mine, now. I claim them, according to the law, as is my right. I will not let the blood knives sacrifice any child of mine. Not again.”

The blood knives turned to Feather Cloak, who had set her feet on the dusty earth of the marketplace.

They said, “There must be a sacrifice.”

“Two goats from that herd,” she said, “and captives of war, strong warriors. But not these children.”

The eldest leaned close, his breath sharp with the smell of pepper, and he whispered, “You will regret this.”

2

AT the Heart-of-the-World, peace seemed to reign. In all the wide land that lay south of the great pyramid, called the Mountain of the World’s Beginning, the Lost Ones had come home and made themselves busy in a hundred ways: building, sweeping, gossiping, mating, planting, fishing, hunting, trading, digging, bathing, carving, plaiting, weaving, grinding, sewing, minding the children, and all the rest besides.

But in the council chamber of the exiles, two brothers argued, while Feather Cloak and half a bundle of trusted councillors watched.

“How can you have managed so quickly, in no more than half a year,” Zuangua was saying, “to make the priests so angry?”

“You were always first to complain of the power hoarded by the sky counters,” said Eldest Uncle with a crooked smile.

“Yes, but I did so where they couldn’t hear me! Yet the Feather Cloak must go to the marketplace, and you do not even counsel her in the proper way to observe the authority held by the priests. Now their knives are raised against you! They make no secret of it.”

“Have you come here only to scold us?” asked Eldest Uncle.

Feather Cloak sighed. The journey back from the city on the lake had wearied her mostly because she could see what was coming. She had hoped for a respite, but hard on her heels had come Zuangua carrying a mantle-load of arrogant anger. She had refused to speak to him until Eldest Uncle could be fetched from the watchtower on the border where he made his home. Now, she listened as he shook his head impatiently at his twin brother’s words.

“I came here to warn you! I speak up for you exiles as much as I am able, because of what binds us, my heart and your heart, but those of us who survived in the shadows have many complaints!”

“Complaints!” cried White Feather.

The others—Green Skirt, Skull Earrings, and seven others, all of them from those who had endured exile together—echoed her outrage.

“How can you have complaints?” asked Eldest Uncle in a milder tone, seeming half amused and half exasperated.

Zuangua held up a fist, showing its back to his aged brother.

“One.” He lifted the little finger. “How have so many died? So many! We who walked beyond the White Road to fight the Pale Dogs and protect our homeland were less than a quarter of the people. Coming home, we discover we outnumber you twentyfold! How have so many died? How has the land fallen empty in a span that is no more than your life?”

“A very few among us saw great-grandchildren born,” said Eldest Uncle with the patience of the old. “That is a long time.”

He was not angry, although the accusation was insulting. Even Feather Cloak, normally the most placid of souls, found herself flushed, cheeks hot. She tucked her infant more tightly against her. Those who had returned from the shadows could not possibly understand how precious each child had become. Green Skirt held the other baby with the fond attention of a besotted aunt, although the two women were not related by blood ties. White Feather had her own children to care for; the toddler was sleeping in a sling tied around the older woman’s torso, and the girl was crouched by the wall, arms hugging her knees, eyes closed, rocking slightly on her feet.