Tian didn’t wait for any of the stock responses. If they went any further down this road, any chance he might have to turn them would be lost. He raised the opopanax feather and said, “Hear what I say! Would ye hear, I beg!”

“Thankee-sai,” they responded. Overholser was looking at Tian distrustfully.

And you’re right to look at me so,the farmer thought. For I’ve had enough of such cowardly common sense, so I have.

“Wayne Overholser is a smart man and a successful man,” Tian said, “and I hate to speak against his position for those reasons. And for another, as well: he’s old enough to be my Da’.”

“ ’Ware he ain’t your Da’,” Garrett Strong’s only farmhand—Rossiter, his name was—called out, and there was general laughter. Even Overholser smiled at this jest.

“Son, if ye truly hate to speak agin me, don’t ye do it,” Overholser said. He continued to smile, but only with his mouth.

“I must, though,” Tian said. He began to walk slowly back and forth in front of the benches. In his hands, the rusty-red plume of the opopanax feather swayed. Tian raised his voice slightly so they’d understand he was no longer speaking just to the big farmer.

“I must because sai Overholser is old enough to be my Da’. His children are grown, do ye kennit, and so far as I know there were only two to begin with, one girl and one boy.” He paused, then shot the killer. “Born two years apart.” Both singletons, in other words. Both safe from the Wolves, although he didn’t need to say it right out loud. The crowd murmured.

Overholser flushed a bright and dangerous red. “That’s a rotten goddamned thing to say! My get’s got nothing to do with this whether single or double! Give me that feather, Jaffords. I got a few more things to say.”

But the boots began to thump down on the boards, slowly at first, then picking up speed until they rattled like hail. Overholser looked around angrily, now so red he was nearly purple.

“I’d speak!” he shouted. “Would’ee not hear me, I beg?”

Cries of No, no and Not now and Jaffords has the feather and Sit and listen came in response. Tian had an idea sai Overholser was learning—and remarkably late in the game—that there was often a deep-running resentment of a village’s richest and most successful. Those less fortunate or less canny (most of the time they amounted to the same) might tug their hats off when the rich folk passed in their buckas or lowcoaches, they might send a slaughtered pig or cow as a thank-you when the rich folk loaned their hired hands to help with a house-or barn-raising, the well-to-do might be cheered at Year End Gathering for helping to buy the piano that now sat in the Pavilion’s musica . Yet the men of the Calla tromped their shor’boots to drown Overholser out with a certain savage satisfaction.