“Easy.” Jonas smiled, then pushed back from the desk to include the others in his regard. “You want to remember, Dave, that I play to win. I can’t help it; it’s just my nature.” He turned his full attention to Roland. His smile broadened. “Like the scorpion said to the maiden as she lay dying, ‘You knowed I was poison when you picked me up.’”

6

When Susan came in from feeding the livestock, she went directly to the cold-pantry for the juice, which was her habit. She didn’t see her aunt standing in the chimney corner and watching her, and when Cordelia spoke, Susan was startled badly. It wasn’t just the unexpectedness of the voice; it was the coldness of it.

“Do ye know him?”

The juice-jug slipped in her fingers, and Susan put a steadying hand beneath it. Orange juice was too precious to waste, especially this late in the year. She turned and saw her aunt by the woodbox. Cordelia had hung her sombrera on a hook in the entryway, but she still wore her serape and muddy boots. Her cuchillo lay on top of the stacked wood, with green strands of sharproot vine still trailing from its edge. Her tone was cold, but her eyes were hot with suspicion.

A sudden clarity filled Susan’s mind and all of her senses. If you say “No,” you’re damned, she thought. If you even ask who, you may be damned. You must say—

“I know them both,” she replied in offhand fashion. “I met them at the party. So did you. Ye frightened me, Aunt.”

“Why did he salute ye so?”

“How can I know? Perhaps he just felt like it.”

Her aunt bolted forward, slipped in her muddy boots, regained her balance, and seized Susan by the arms. Now her eyes were blazing. “Be’n’t insolent with me, girl! Be’n’t haughty with me, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty, or I’ll—”

Susan pulled backward so hard that Cordelia staggered and might have fallen again, if the table had not been handy to grab. Behind her, muddy foot-tracks stood out on the clean kitchen floor like accusations. “Call me that again and I’ll... I’ll slap thee!” Susan cried. “So I will!”

Cordelia’s lips drew back from her teeth in a dry, ferocious smile. “Ye’d slap your father’s only living blood kin? Would ye be so bad?”

“Why not? Do ye not slap me, Aunt?”

Some of the heat went out of her aunt’s eyes, and the smile left her mouth. “Susan! Hardly ever! Not half a dozen times since ye were a toddler who would grab anything her hands could reach, even a pot of boiling water on the—”