“Ah.” It was a barely audible sigh. “You’ll need a husband one day, and you could do worse than the man with the authority of the god of Au.”
Ifanei turned the corners of her mouth down. “I could do better,” she said. “The wife he already has is beautiful, and proud. She would not welcome any division in her husband’s attentions, and she is altogether too unconcerned about the matter. I would be ignored at best.”
Ihak managed a breathy laugh. “We think alike. So. I only asked because if the prospect had pleased you I would have done my best to secure him for you. Hm. It does not, so we must make other plans.”
Now, Ihak had been a shrewder man than anyone had known. When he realized that the only child the god would grant him was a girl, he had hidden a part of his savings — the stacks of sealskins and volcanic glass blades that were the wealth of Au — in places only he knew. He had seen the resentment of the elite of Au when the two hunters had elevated themselves. He knew that the Speaker would have moved to discontinue the custom if he had not feared the anger of the common people. But further attempts on the strangers had proved futile, and the hopes of advancement had ceased to be real. The threat had receded, but it might reappear one day. Ihak knew that he would almost certainly be the last holder of his office. He also knew that the Speaker would go to considerable inconvenience to gain possession of Ifanei’s inheritance. Thinking of all this, he had planned accordingly.
The day after Ihak’s funeral, when Ifanei was sitting silent and cross-legged on the cold stone floor of her quarters, hair unbound and mourning ashes smeared on her face, the Speaker came to see her. “Ifanei,” he said, “I have spoken to the god. Your father’s office is to be discontinued. It is hardly a surprise; if it had been meant to continue, your father would have been granted a fit heir for the position.”
Ifanei knew well enough that the god had never been concerned with petty matters of administration, so long as sacrifices arrived regularly. She did not look at the Speaker but at the floor, and she kept her voice small and tear-choked as she answered. “As the god wills.”
“Poor Ifanei!” said the Speaker. “We will all miss your father, but you will understandably miss him the most. How fortunate you are to have cousins nearby to take care of you.” She said nothing. “Don’t forget, I am your cousin, too, and I regard you highly.” Still Ifanei was silent. “Lovely Ifanei!” said the Speaker then, with no hint of mockery. “When the time comes, you will want to ponder the advantages of a closer connection with me, and at a more appropriate time I will speak to you of my desires.”
In a bag, under Ifanei’s bed, were an undyed hooded sealskin coat and black glass knife. In her memory were the locations, well away from the Place of the God, where Ihak had cached a significant part of his valuables. In a week, villagers from along the north coast would come to Ilu, bringing their tribute of seals and seabirds to the Place of the God. When they left, who would notice one extra young boy among them?
“I will think seriously on everything you say,” Ifanei said to the Speaker. She still looked steadily at the floor. “My father often spoke of his great respect for you, and I am fortunate to have such a cousin. I am so very grateful for your concern.” She said this with every evidence of sincerity, and the Speaker was pleased with himself when he left her.
It was at this time that the god of Au returned to the Godless, and spoke to Steq, and shortly thereafter Righteous Vengeance ventured by night close to the shore of Au, and Steq went ashore.
Each year the north coast villagers who brought their tribute to Ilu traveled in a long, chaotic column along the sea. The seals, skins, birds, and eggs they brought were piled on sledges, the eggs carefully packed in grass. Each traveler took a turn pulling the offerings of his own village, each village they passed added to their number, and by the time the procession neared Ilu it became a noisy throng, the spirits of the participants undampened by the fact that at least half of them were suffering the effects of too much seaweed beer the night before. Between the crowd and the beer, no one noticed that a stranger had joined their number.
Steq had not been a young man when the Godless had sailed into Au’s waters, and after sixteen years his hair had grayed. But he had not changed otherwise. He did not much resemble the people of Au — his skin was too dark, his hair too fine, his features not quite right somehow, though this may have been only a certain hardness about the mouth that was unusual in a man of Au. He kept the hood of his coat up, and his head down, and those walking next to him thought he must be from some other village, and attributed his silence to last night’s beer, and let him be.
What Steq could see of Au was tall grass sweeping up the skirts of an ice-topped mountain. Here and there a stream was lined with stunted osiers, but there were otherwise no trees. The view was all green grass, black stone, and white ice, with gray clouds over everything. The villages they passed seemed nothing more than turf mounds huddled together, with here and there a whale rib protruding. At each one children ran shouting out of the low houses, clad in sealskin coats and trousers but barefoot in the mud. The whole column came to a swirling semi-halt as men and women followed the children out of the houses with much waving and laughter and handing over of food and skins of what Steq presumed was the ever-present beer. Then as if at some signal Steq was unable to detect a few of the villagers picked up the lines to their own sledges, the crowd moved forward again, and the village was left behind.
From a distance Ilu seemed no more than a bump on the treeless hillside, the Place of the God no more than a pile of stones, and the whole vista was dominated by the same mountain, and the icy blue river that ran down to the sea. Arriving, Steq saw the same tumble of turf houses, the same shouting, barefoot children, and he was nearly at the Place of the God before he realized that he was in the city itself. He had thought they were merely passing yet another village.
The procession broke like a wave onto the whale-rib gates of the Place of the God and spilled into the surrounding streets. Pushed along with the crowd, Steq found himself in a muddy, open square where women wearing coats sewn with seabird feathers and painted white, brown, or muted green began singing out in loud voices. The only word Steq recognized was “beer,” which he had learned in the first hours of his joining the pilgrimage. The women were instantly surrounded and began what appeared to be fierce bargaining, though Steq had not seen anything resembling money. He turned against the flow of the crowd and made his way back to the Place of the God.
By now the sledges were lined up at the gates, and no few sledge pullers were casting glances in the direction of the square Steq had just left. He found a morose-looking man at the end of the line, and put his hand on the braided sealskin rope the man was holding.
The man instantly stood straighter and grinned. He said something — a question by the sound, but Steq knew only a few words of the language of Au. It was possible that yes, no, or beer would answer the man satisfactorily, but it was best not to speak. Keeping his face half-hidden by his coat hood, Steq shrugged towards the square.
The man, still smiling broadly, dropped the line, took Steq by both shoulders, drew him close into a miasma of fermented seaweed, and kissed him on the cheek. He said something else, sending an even stronger waft of beer Steq’s way, and reached into his coat, pulled something out, and pressed it into Steq’s hand. Then, none too steadily, the man walked away. Steq found himself holding a lump of glassy, brownish-golden stone that had been smoothed and rounded into a vaguely animal-like shape that he could not identify. He put it in a pouch under his coat.