Nervously Kira nodded in reply and bowed slightly.
"As for you?" The chief guardian looked again at Vandara, who stood sullenly between the guards. He spoke politely to her. "You have not lost. You demanded the girl’s land, and you may have it, you and the other women. Build your pen. It would be wise to pen your tykes; they are troublesome and should be better contained.
"Go now," he commanded.
Vandara turned. Her face was a mask of fury. She shrugged away the hands of the guards, leaned forward, and whispered harshly to Kira, "You will fail. Then they will kill you."
She smiled coldly at Jamison. "So, that’s it, then," she said. "The girl is yours." She stalked down the aisle and went through the broad door.
The chief guardian and the other Council members ignored the outburst, as if it were merely an annoying insect that had finally been swatted away. Someone was refolding the Singer’s robe.
"Kira," Jamison said, "go and gather what you need. Whatever you want to bring with you. Be back here when the bell rings four times. And we will take you to your quarters, to the place where you will live from now on."
Puzzled, Kira waited a moment. But there were no other instructions. The guardians were straightening their papers and collecting their books and belongings. They seemed to have forgotten she was there. Finally she stood, straightened herself against her walking stick, and limped from the room.
Emerging from the Council Edifice into bright sunlight and the usual chaos of the village central plaza, she realized that it was still midafternoon, still an ordinary day in the existence of the people, and that no one’s life had changed except her own.
The summer-start day was hot. Near the Edifice steps, a crowd had gathered to watch a pig-slaughter behind the butcher’s. After the choice parts were sold, scraps would be thrown. People and dogs together would shove and grab. The smell from the thick mounds of excrement beneath the terrified pigs and the high-pitched squeals of terror as they awaited death made Kira feel dizzy and nauseated. She hurried around the edge of the throng, making her way toward the weaving shed.
"You’re out! What happened? Do you go to the Field? To the beasts?"
Matt was calling to her in excitement. Kira smiled. His curiosity appealed to her — it matched her own — and behind his wildness he had a kind heart, she thought. She remembered how he had acquired his pet, his little companion dog. It had been a useless stray, underfoot, scavenging everywhere for food. On a rainy afternoon it had been caught and tossed by the wheel of a passing donkey cart. Badly injured, the dog lay bleeding in the mud and would have been left to die unnoticed. But the boy hid it in nearby shrubbery until its wounds had mended. Kira had watched from the weaving shed each day as Matt stealthily crept in to feed the animal while it lay healing. Now the dog, lively and in good health despite a tail as crooked and useless as Kira’s leg, stayed constantly at Matt’s side. He called it Branch, named for the small tree part he had used to splint its damaged tail.
Kira reached down and scratched the homely mongrel behind his ear. "I’m let go," she told the boy.
His eyes widened. Then he grinned. "So we still be getting stories, me and my mates," he said with satisfaction.
"I seen Vandara," Matt added. "She come out like this." He scampered to the steps of the Edifice and stalked down them, face haughty. Kira smiled at the imitation.
"She be hating you now for certain," Matt added cheerfully.
"Well, they gave her my piece of land," Kira told him, "so she and the others can make a pen for their tykes, the way they wanted.
"I hope you didn’t already start on a new cott for me," she added, remembering that he had offered.
Matt grinned. "We didn’t start yet," he said. "Soon we would’ve. But if you be sent to the beasts, then there be no need."
He paused, rubbing Branch with his dirty bare foot. "Where you to live, then?"
Kira slapped at a mosquito on her arm. She rubbed at the little smear of blood from its bite. "I don’t know," she admitted. "They told me to come back to the Edifice when the bell rings four. I’m to gather my things." She laughed a little. "I don’t have much to gather. My things were mostly burned."
Matt grinned. "I saved you some things," he told her happily. "I filched 'em from your cott before the burning. Didn’t tell you before. I waited to see what be happening to you."
Down the path, beyond the pig-slaughter, Matt’s mates called to him to hurry and join them. "Me and Branch must go along now," he said, "but I be bringing the things to you when the bells go four. To the steps, aye?"
"Thank you, Matt. I’ll meet you at the steps." Smiling, Kira watched him go, his thin, scabbed legs churning in the dusty path as he ran to join his friends. Beside him, Branch scampered, his broken stub of a tail wagging crookedly.
Kira continued on through the crowds, past the food shops and the noise of bickering, bargaining women. Dogs barked; a pair of them snarled, facing each other with bared teeth in the path, a dropped morsel between them. Nearby, a curly-headed tyke eyed both dogs warily then deftly leaped between them, seized the bit of food, and stuffed it into his own mouth. His mother, intent on her business at a nearby shop, glanced around, saw the tyke near the dogs, and seized him away, yanking at his arm and administering a sharp slap to his head when he was back at her side. The tyke smirked, chewing eagerly at whatever he had picked up from the path.
The weaving shed was farther along, mercifully in a shady area surrounded by large trees. It was quieter there and cooler, though the mosquitoes were more numerous. The women in the shed, seated at looms, nodded to Kira as she approached. "There’s plenty scraps to gather," one called and gestured with her head as her hands continued work.
It was the job that Kira usually did, the tidying up. She was not permitted to weave yet, though she had always watched carefully how it was done and thought that she could have, if they needed her.
She had not been at the weaving shed in many days, not since her mother’s illness and death. So much had happened. So much had changed. She assumed that she would not be returning now that her status seemed different. But because they had called to her in a friendly way, Kira moved through the shed, through the clatter of the wooden looms at work, and picked up the scraps from the floor. One loom was silent, she noticed. No one was working there today. Fourth from the end, she counted. Usually Camilla was there.
She paused by the empty loom and waited until a nearby worker had stopped to reset her shuttle.
"Where is Camilla?" Kira asked curiously. Sometimes, of course, the women left briefly, to wed, to give birth, or simply assigned to some other temporary task.
The weaver glanced over, her hands still occupied. Her feet began to move again on the treadle. "She fell, took a clumsy fall, over at the stream." She gestured with her head. "Doing washing. The rocks were mossy."
"Yes, it’s slippery there." Kira knew. She had slipped herself sometimes at the stream, at the washing place.
The woman shrugged. "She broke her arm real bad. Can’t be fixed. Can’t be made straight. No more good for weaving. Her hubby tried real hard to straighten up the arm 'cause he needs her. For the tykes and such. But she’ll probably go to the Field."
Kira shuddered, imagining the torturing pain of the broken arm as the hubby tried to pull it into a healing shape.
"She has five tykes, Camilla does. Now she can’t care for them, or work. They’ll be given away. You want one?" The woman grinned at Kira. She had few teeth.