I knew that hunters held various proscriptions, as well as hanging amulets about their bodies before they entered the bush to hunt, so I felt it prudent not to listen to their secret business. Instead, Bee and I introduced ourselves to the women.

In a village like this, still fixed in the traditional ways, women and men kept most aspects of their lives separate. The women took Bee and me to a little temple dedicated to Mother Faro, the name they gave the deity of the river, where we poured libations over the stone altar. Afterward we settled into a common room lined with pots made by the most prestigious woman in the village, a potter who had married the blacksmith. The potter was black in complexion, a woman of renown married in from another prosperous village. Food and drink she offered in plenty, although no beef, as that was reserved for the men at this time of year. Women and children wandered in and out to observe us. I brought out my sewing kit, and they exclaimed over my steel needles, commonplace in Expedition but precious here. I sewed while Bee talked.

It was just so interesting to watch how Bee coaxed people into thinking about things in a new way. The women had never heard of Expedition or the Antilles, nor even of General Camjiata, although they had all heard of the Iberian Monster, known as a marauding general whose troops ate babies and who magicked women into men to make more soldiers for his army.

“All this talk of an assembly in a far country makes little difference to us,” said the potter. “What I want to know is how a man can write a law code and suppose any mage or prince will care what it says? They can ignore it easily enough.”

“Not if you do not ignore it!” said Bee.

“Words scratched on paper do not a binding make. Only blood makes a binding.”

“We are bound if we believe there is only one way things can be,” said Bee.

“Do you think we can stand against their soldiers?” asked the potter as others nodded. “You are young and innocent to not know the way of things.”

Regardless of how little agreement Bee fostered among the women who stayed up late to listen, she kept them listening, even if only for the novelty. She and I slept together in an alcove bed tucked into the wall, with a pair of dogs curled at our feet. In the morning I gave the potter a steel needle, and the women provisioned us with enough barley-cake, turnips, and beans to last three days.

“What did you discuss?” I asked Vai once we were back out on the river.

“I can’t speak of it.” To a man raised as he had been, such secrets were sacred. He was careful not to touch me. Even Rory was unusually solemn, in a mood I might have called brooding.