"You didn't answer my question," Grinsa said. "Are we captives?"
But Cresenne had the sense that the man had answered. There were four Weavers here. How was Grinsa supposed to fight their way free past four Weavers?
"You're our guests," the a'laq said.
"Guests are free to leave whenever they wish."
The a'laq's eyes flashed. "Captives are treated poorly. You won't be. We'll have a z'kal built for you by nightfall. You'll eat as the rest of us do. Have you tasted rilda?"
"No," Grinsa said thickly.
"Then this will be a night to remember. For both of you," he added, with a quick glance at Cresenne.
For some time the two men sat staring at one another, neither of their gazes wavering.
"Cresenne is to be accepted as my wife," Grinsa said at last. E'Menua seemed to consider this briefly. Then he nodded. "At least for the time being."
Grinsa shook his head. "For as long as we're here. Or else I'll try to leave right now. The other Weavers may stop me, but you won't. And then your sept will only have three, rather than five."
Cresenne expected the a'laq to rage at him. She wouldn't have been surprised if they'd started to do battle right there in the shelter.
Instead, the old man began to laugh. "Very well then," he said. "You'll make a fine Fal'Borna, Forelander." He laughed again, gesturing at his crotch. "You have the stones for it." He waved a hand at the entryway. "Now, go. We'll speak again later."
Cresenne and Grinsa looked at each other, then stood and left the shelter. Outside, the sun seemed overly bright and the air felt cold. A gust of wind made Cresenne shiver.
"Now what?" she said.
"Now we find something to eat."
She looked at him sharply.
"There's nothing else we can do, Cresenne. Not today. For better or worse, we're Fal'Borna now."
"Which I suppose makes me your concubine."
He raised an eyebrow. "True. Maybe there's an upside to this." She punched his arm, hard.
Chapter 13
The skies above her had turned grey days ago, blotting out stars and sun, the red and white of the moons and the blue Harvest mornings. Occasionally it rained on her. Most times it was merely cold and windy. And grey. Color had vanished from her world, or so it sometimes seemed. But no, there was color still. The primrose yellow and fiery oranges, the lavenders and larkspur purple, the berry-stain reds and that startling indigo she'd found the previous year. And so many shades of brown-earth, straw, pale gold like the sunbaked grasses of the plain, warm brown like Mettai skin, flax and bay and chestnut and dead leaves and all browns in between.
Yes, there was still color in her world. Not in the sky or in the villages or in the people she encountered. But there, in her baskets. A world of color, a lifetime of color, in the weaving she had done, in the spells she had cast, in the damage she had done thus far and would do again.
She had gone farther west, beyond the Companion Lakes, deeper into Qirsi land. Always she remained to the north, though, because this was where the Y'Qatt had settled. It was hard land. Uncompromising cold during the Snows, stubborn winds that swept down off the mountains during the Harvest and the early Planting, and during the Growing a relentlessly hot sun that sucked moisture from the earth, just as the Y'Qatt believed magic sucked life from their bodies. The storms, when they came, their rain like mercy, were fierce, violent affairs. There was no sympathy in this land, no respite from its cruelty. How well she knew. This was the land that was left to outcasts. Of course the Y'Qatt would settle here. Their white-hair brothers and sisters to the south would think nothing of ceding this land to them. Just as the Eandi had ceded the land near the eastern Companion Lakes to the Mettai.
It should have occurred to her long ago, as she prepared for this last great undertaking of her life. But only after leaving Kirayde had she started to understand what should have been so obvious. She'd seen only the differences-Y'Qatt and Mettai were to each other as wraiths of the night were to creatures of day, as death was to life, as bone and dust were to blood and flesh. But as she spoke to the man in Runnelwick, the one who'd called her "Mettai" the way he might have called another woman "whore," it had come to her like lightning on a steamy day. Y'Qatt and Mettai-opposites yes, but as two edges of the same sword. Both were outcasts from their own races, but also they were bridges to the other race: Eandi sorcerers, Qirsi who rejected magic.
There were days in the darkness of the Snows when it seemed that Morna was offering a glimpse of the Planting to come: warm breezes and sunshine that melted the ice on the lakes and began to coax buds from trees that yearned for the Growing turns. Sometimes there would be several of them in succession and Sylpa would call it a false Planting, as if the winds and the sun were trying to trick them into putting in their crops too soon. There were similar days late in the Harvest, when the warmth would return briefly, like a memory of the Growing. Sylpa had a name for these as welclass="underline" the shadow Growing.
False Planting and shadow Growing. They were separated by more than half the year, and yet the days were the same. They didn't belong- warmth when there was supposed to be cold, clear skies when there should have been grey and wind and snow. So it was with the Y'Qatt and the Mettai. They didn't belong, they had been cast out of societies that had little in common other than their rigidity, and so they were much alike.
Her realization changed nothing, of course. If anything, it made worse all that had happened before, and thus made her even more determined to see this through to the end, despite how tired she had grown in recent days.
It was more dangerous now that she was so far beyond Silverwater Wash. The white-hairs who shared this land with the Y'Qatt had no particular cause to dislike the Mettai, or to shun her for being one, but they were Fal'Borna, and no Qirsi hated the Eandi more. She'd learned, though. She wouldn't be caught unaware again, as she had been by that fool of a girl near Tivston. And she was ready to take on something greater, something more than just these tiny villages she'd visited thus far.
C'Bijor's Neck. She'd passed it by heading north, because she hadn't been ready yet. The others had been preparing her for this. Now, though…
C'Bijor's Neck was one of the largest Y'Qatt settlements in the north, nearly as large as the great white-hair cities on the Ofirean. She'd been there once before, many years back, as she'd started preparing in earnest for this day. She'd heard of the place from peddlers she met while trading her baskets. The Neck, they called it, because it sat on a spur of land that jutted out into the Silverwater, just below Turtle Lake. They'd encouraged her then to sell her baskets in the marketplace there-they told her it was huge, the largest market along the northern half of the river. But she'd known then that she should wait, that to show herself and her wares in C'Bijor's Neck too soon would be a mistake. So she nodded, and she listened, and she tucked away every bit of information she could glean from them, like a beggar hoarding coins.
They liked deep baskets in the Neck, or at least those were the ones that sold best. Deep, with high handles, usually braided, because they felt best against the hand when the baskets were laden with fruit or grain. They liked bright dyes, or else earth colors-nothing in between. And they had little use for small baskets, ornamental ones with no practical use. The Y'Qatt of C'Bijor's Neck were a sturdy, sensible people, well adapted to the harsh life afforded them on the northern plain.
So early that morning, in the cold, dim grey that precedes a cloudy dawn, as Lici prepared to make her way into the village, she gathered all her small baskets and hid them in her cart. She left her horse and wagon within the shadows of the small copse in which she'd bedded down the night before. Then she dragged the blade across her hand, as she had so many times before, and cast her spell on the baskets that remained with her. These she packed up and carried to the city, arriving in the marketplace with the first of the peddlers. Without her cart she was left to spread out her blankets on the ground. She arranged the baskets in neat rows; sturdy, sensible rows. She almost laughed aloud at the thought.