"For once Obring is right," said Elemak. "It takes years of training to become a good bowman. Why do you think I brought pulses? Bows are better—they have a longer range, they never run out of power, and they do less damage to the meat. But I don't know how to use one, let alone make one."
"Neither do I," said Nafai. "But the Oversoul can teach me."
"In a month, perhaps," said Elemak. "But we don't have a month."
"In a day," said Nafai. "Give me until sundown tomorrow. If I haven't brought back meat, then I'll agree with Vas and Meb that we have to go to Dorova, at least for a while."
"If we go to Dorova, it's the end of this foolish expedition," said Meb. "I'll never get back on a camel for any reason except to go home."
Several agreed with him.
"Give me a day, and I'll agree with you," said Nafai. "We're not running out of provisions yet, and this is a good place to wait. A day."
"A waste of time," said Elemak. "You can't possibly do it."
"Then what harm will it do to let me prove it to you? But I say I can do it, with the Oversoul to help me. The knowledge is all there in its memory. And the game is easy to find here."
"I'll track for you," said Vas.
"No!" said Luet. Nafai looked at her, startled—she had said nothing till now. "Nafai will do this alone. He and the Oversoul. That's how it has to be." Then she looked up at him, steadily and intently.
She knows something, thought Nafai. Then he remembered again the thoughts that came to him on the mountain this morning—that Vas had been trying to kill him. That Vas caused his fall. Did the Oversoul speak clearly to her? Were my fears justified? Is that why she'd rather send me out alone?
"So you'll leave in the morning?" asked Volemak.
"No," said Nafai. "Today. I hope to make a bow today, so I can have tomorrow for the hunt. After all, my first few targets may get away."
"This is stupid," said Meb. "What does Nafai think he is, one of the Heroes of Pyiretsiss?"
"I'm not going to let this expedition fail!" shouted Nafai. "That's who I am. And if I won't let a broken pulse stop us, you can bet all the snot in your nose that I won't let you get in the way."
Meb looked at him and laughed. "You've got a bet, Nyef, my sweet little brother. All the snot in my nose says you'll fail."
"Done."
"Except we haven't specified what you give me when you fail."
"It doesn't matter," said Nafai. "I won't fail."
"But if you do ... then you're my personal servant."
Meb's words were greeted with derision by many around the circle. "Snot against servitude," said Eiadh contemptuously. "Just what I'd expect of you, Meb."
"He doesn't have to take the bet," said Meb.
"Set a time limit on it," said Nafai. "Say—a month."
"A year. A year in which you do whatever I command."
"This is sickening," said Volemak. "I forbid it."
"You already agreed to it, Nafai," said Mebbekew. "If you back out of it now, you'll stand before us all as an oathbreaker."
"When I lay the meat down at your feet, Meb, you'll decide then what I am, and it won't be on oathbreaker, that's certain."
And so it was agreed. They'd wait until sundown tomorrow for Nafai to return.
He left them, hurried to the kitchen tent, and gathered what he'd need—biscuit and dried melon and jerky. Then he headed for the spring to refill his flagon. With his knife at his side, he'd need no more.
Luet met him there, as he knelt beside the pool, immersing the flagon to fill it.
"Where's Chveya?" he asked.
"With Shuya," she answered. "I needed to talk to you. Instead we had that… meeting."
"And I needed to talk to you, too," he said. "But things got out of hand, and now there's no time."
"I hope there's time for you to take this," she said.
In her hand was a spool of twine.
"I hear that bows don't work without a string," she said. "And the Oversoul said that this kind would be best."
"You asked?"
"She seemed to think you were about to rush off without it, and that you'd regret the lack of it by and by."
"I would have, yes." He took it, put it in his pouch. Then he bent to her and kissed her. "You always look out for me."
"When I can," she said. "Nafai, while you were gone, the Oversoul spoke to me. Very clearly."
"Yes?"
"Was Vas near you when you fell?" "He was."
"Near enough that he could have caused it? By, for instance, pushing your foot?"
Nafai instantly recalled that terrible moment on the face of the rock, when his right foot first slipped. It had slid inward, toward his left foot. If it had just been friction giving way, wouldn't the foot have slid straight down?
"Yes," said Nafai. "The Oversoul tried to warn me, but…"
"But you thought it was your own fear and ignored it."
Nafai nodded. She knew how the Oversoul's voice felt—like your own thoughts, like your own fears.
"You men," she said. "Always afraid of being afraid. Don't you know that fear is the most fundamental tool that evolution uses to keep a species alive? Yet you ignore it as if you hoped to die."
"Yes, well, I can't help what testosterone does to me. You'd enjoy being married to me a lot less if I didn't have any."
She smiled. But the smile didn't last long. "Something else the Oversoul told me," said Luet. "Vas is planning…"
But at that moment Obring and Kokor sauntered over. "Having second thoughts, little brother?" asked Kokor.
"My thoughts often come in threes and fours," said Nafai. "Not one at a time, like yours."
"I just wanted to wish you well," said Kokor. "I really hope you bring home some scruffy little hare for us to eat. Because if you don't then we'll have to go to a city and eat cooked food, and that would be just awful, don't you think?"
"Somehow I think your heart isn't in your kind words," said Nafai.
"If I thought you had a chance of succeeding," said Obring, "I'd break your arm."
"If a man like you could break my arm," said Nafai, "I really wouldn't have a chance."
"Please," said Luet. "Don't we have trouble enough?"
"Sweet little peacemaker," said Kokor. "Not much for looks, are you, but maybe you'll grow old gracefully."
Nafai couldn't help it. Kokor's insults were so childish, so much like what passed for cleverness among schoolchildren, that he had to laugh.
Kokor didn't like it. "Laugh all you want," said Kokor. "But I can sing my way back to wealth, and Mother still has a household in Basilica that I can inherit. What does your father have for you? And what kind of household will your little orphan wife establish for you in Basilica?"
Luet stepped forward and faced Kokor; Nafai noticed for the first time that they were almost the same height, which meant Luet had been growing this past year. She really is still a child, he thought.
"Koya," said Luet. "You forget whom you're speaking to. You may think that Nafai is just your younger brother. In the future, though, I hope you'll remember that he is the husband of the waterseer."
Kokor answered with defiance. "And what does that matter here?"
"It doesn't matter at all.. here. But if we were to return to Basilica, dear Koya, I wonder how far your career will go if you're known to be the enemy of the waterseer."
Kokor blanched. "You wouldn't."
"No," said Luet, "I wouldn't. I never used my influence that way. And besides—we're not going back to Basilica."
Nafai had never seen Luet act so imperious before. He was enough of a Basilican to feel somewhat overawed at the title of waterseer; it was easy to forget sometimes that the woman he took to bed every night was the same woman whose dreams, whose words, were whispered house to house in Basilica. Once she had come to him at great risk, leaving the city in the middle of the night to wake him and warn him of danger to his father—and on that night she did not show any sign that she was aware of her lofty role in the city. Once she had taken him, when he was being chased by Gaballufix's men, and led him down into the waters of the Lake of Women, where no man was allowed to go and return alive—and even then, as she faced down those who would have killed him, she had not taken this tone, but rather had spoken calmly, quietly.