“What are those? What are those? Beggars and servants, beggars and servants. Orphan, orphan, will you come out to play? Pick up my boots, grease my harness! Here’s the scum from the broth for your licking.”

Kirya and Mariya had ridden for five days on the trail of the Vidrini tribe, and Kirya was too hungry and too exhausted from grief to shout back in kind. Mari kept her gaze fixed forward, ignoring the youths. She might have been a daughter of the Sakhalin, with that proud gaze and contemptuous expression.

People stared as the two girls rode into camp. Here were fine tents, and a blacksmith’s portable foundry pouring its rich offerings of smoke to the heavens. The Vidrini had no Singer, but they had churns fitted with copper trimmings, weavings hanging in profusion, men strutting around in brightly embroidered shirts, and women wearing everyday jewelry like bracelets and silver necklaces because they were wealthy enough to show off their riches even as they went about their daily chores. Or perhaps because they had servants to do the chores for them.

Mari’s glare cut a passage right up to the awning of the headwoman’s tent. Mari dismounted while Kirya remained in the saddle, scanning the camp for any sign of the children.

Shockingly, the Vidrini headwoman was a foreigner. Like Orphan, she had demon-scratched eyes, not round but slanted as though a demon’s claws had raked them into her face. But she had a much more foreign look than Orphan, a real Easterner with hair as black as soot, eyes as black as night, and flat features marked particularly by a cruel mouth. Seated on a plush pillow, she did not rise to greet them. Feder’s winged kur was propped on a stand beside her, and a small girl child with similar eyes but lighter hair sat on a pillow next to the kur, dressed in unspeakably rich silk robes.

Mariya marched to the edge of the carpet, and spoke in a clear, carrying voice. “It is easy to steal servants from tribes that cannot defend themselves. No wonder you Vidrini have become rich.”

Many folk, both male and female, had gathered, but it was women who hissed at Mari’s bold insult.

“That which is dying is prey,” said the headwoman, her words clipped off by a foreigner’s way of speaking. “What do you want?”

“My kinsmen returned to me. My tribes-folk released.”

“Those who came of their free will cannot be ‘released,’ ” said the headwoman with the scorn wielded by the powerful. A man sauntered out of the crowd and ducked under the awning, to kneel behind her. He was the war leader they had seen at the confluence. He whispered into her ear, and she nodded without taking her gaze off Mariya.

“Then the Moroshya tribe claims compensation for their migration into the Vidrini tribe.”

The Vidrini headwoman laughed mockingly. “How do you mean to enforce your claim?”

“I am here as representative of the headwoman of the Moroshya tribe, who is my mother. I negotiate on her behalf for the return of two sons of the Moroshya tribe. Furthermore, you have taken two daughters of the Moroshya tribe against their will. That is a grave violation of the laws of the gods.”