One night I woke to hear her crying softly. We had gone hunting in the woods, and slept beside the fire, the dogs near us. I took her in my arms, and asked her why she wept, but she would not answer, and that was answer enough. She had taught me also tenderness, with her at least. It did not irk me anymore that her pride wounded her because of me, but then I did not properly understand it. I thought it should pass, that all would be well.

So I held her, and I spoke to her of how I had found the statue in the trees, that fall of leaf when I was fifteen years, the marble maiden of the grove on her plinth above the spring.

Demizdor lay still in my arms, listening. Somewhere an owl called, sailing the moonlight on his broad wings. Sparks burst purple and golden in the fire, and the dogs twitched dreaming tails through the warm ashes.

“One day you will regret me,” she said. On her shoulder the scar of Chula’s spite was growing dim, like a pale, dark flower. She filled her hands with my hair and kissed my throat. “You are not of the tribes,” she murmured. “You are a prince of the Dark City, of Ezlann, Uastis’ citadel.”

As I drew her down, I saw the lynx-mask glint at me across the fire where she had left it, like a face watching with black hollow eyes. And, for a moment, those eyes seemed filled by life before the fire sank again among the wood.

3

Moka bore me a daughter in the month of Yellow-leaf. She looked guilty when I came in (it had always been boys before), but I was lighthearted and reassured her. I gave her a garnet to hang on the baby’s basket, for they were reckoned lucky stones, strengthening to the blood.

Three evenings after this, Tathra’s child began to move, some forty days too soon.

There had been one of the little Dagkta tribal councils to talk over this right or that. Generally the warriors met about this time, before Sihharn and the preparations for turning west along Snake’s Road. Ettook went and so did I. We were gone two days. When we came back it was to find Tathra already in labor.

A boy brought Ettook the tidings. Ettook showed his teeth and made a great joke of it, saying his son was impatient to get out and be a warrior. He had a gibe for me as well, how I had better leave off riding my yellow-haired man-woman, and remember my brave’s war skills or the babe should best me even from his cradle.

As for me, my vitals churned. I had kept sufficient of a reckoning to know it was too early, and now it all came borne to me, how I had been with Tathra, how I had neglected her. I recollected she had said, “You have punished me enough by ceasing to love me.” I might have shrunk down into a child again. Suddenly I could see her in my mind’s eye, her beauty and its loss, her wretched life, that she had needed me and I had found another. The mother is the boy’s first woman. And no man had ever valued her but me.