“I’ve heard they are beautiful in the way lynxes and panthers are sleek and handsome,” said Ipis breathlessly, “the way griffins and sarpa are glorious in being deadly, the way horses run with a beauty no human can ever match.”

“How poetic.” Jirvy shook his head wearily. “They’re killers. Hunters and warriors.”

Ipis ignored him. “But you’ve traveled a great deal, Worthy Interlocutor, have you not? You’ve seen and spoken to aivur?”

“That I have.” Luviara punctuated the statement by eating a spoonful of candied cloudberries, and the sweetness made her smile. “I have walked in the harbor of North Antinis and spoken to the ones the Sea Wolves call bequeathers. These bequeathers are the ones among them who may speak to outsiders. I have traded stories and songs in the villages, called ‘holdings,’ where many of the aivur who emerged out of the Desolation settled. I have even spoken to a delegation of forest aivur, the mysterious people called Stalkers.”

“Forest Wolves, you mean,” muttered Jirvy.

She glanced at him and went on. “They’d come out of the southern forest to trade in Vartic Port, on the shore of Diamond Bay. As for the host of the Blood Wolves, they do not speak to us. They only attack. No imperial soldier or humble farmer captured by them has ever returned.”

Simo cleared his throat as a prelude to speaking. The others settled obediently to await his words of wisdom.

The captain spoke in grave tones. “I have traveled in the east and along the contested northern shore. The aivur are wickedly strong and swift because they carry inside themselves the attributes of beasts. That is why they are not like us. We are human in all the ways the High Heavens approve. They are monsters, even if they do not look it.”

Elen surreptitiously watched the haunt, who listened with his usual look of intense curiosity. What he thought of all this she could not be sure, nor what was familiar to him and what was new.

“Yet humans can also be monsters, as we learn in the tale of The Five Cannibal Cousins,” said Xilsi.

“That’s just a made-up story,” objected Jirvy.

“Who’s to say there’s no truth to it?” said Luviara good-naturedly. “Are you saying we humans never act wickedly or monstrously? Never lie, or steal, or cheat, or kill without just cause?”

“No, no, of course not,” he said hastily.

Xilsi snickered, then fell silent, rubbing her mouth with the back of a hand at a sharp look from Simo.