The Care and Feeding of Griffins (25 page)

“
I…”  The filly began to frown.  Her hands clutched at the edge of the table, white-knuckled.  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

“
Now imagine that you are there, that all of you are there, and Tonka does this impossible thing, and no one else is moving and it’s up to you, Shard.  Do you put the fire out or do you let it burn?  Are you going to be the first one to act?”

Shard stared down at her hands on the wood of the table.  She didn
’t answer.

“
In my world, evil men occasionally become chief.  What would you do if Tonka suddenly decided that, oh, all horsemen with brown coats should be thrown out of the village?  Or killed, if they wouldn’t go?  And don’t look at me like that, Shard, I’m not making that example up.  If there are a thousand people doing nothing all around you, do you do what’s right and obey truth, or do you do nothing and obey the law?”

“
But if…if I am the only one who stands,” Shard began, her eyes back on the tabletop, “what is to prevent them from killing me?”

“
Nothing.”

“
And if I do nothing, what…what is to prevent these evil chiefs from sending their evil laws against Farasai with black coats like mine?”

“
Nothing.”

Shard looked up, her eyes bright and troubled. 
“I don’t like your world,” she said seriously.

“
It has its problems,” Taryn admitted.  “But the thing about evil days like those is that it gave so many people the chance to choose good in a way that let everyone see it.  In ways that let everyone else follow after.  And if you ask me, that’s why truth really exists in our minds, Shard, to give us a noble goal to walk towards when things get bad.  Because when we’re all forced to do the right thing without question, then we’re not really choosing to, and unless you have that choice, it’s hard to see who really has integrity.”

“
Do you have integrity?” Shard asked, before the thoughtful grunts had even finished running the room.

Taryn was taken back by the directness of the question.  Tonka had to nudge her before she noticed the food he was holding out and even then, she only held it as she combed through her answer. 
“I would say,” she began slowly, “that I pursue integrity.  I don’t always make the right decisions, or even know what the right decisions are.  But I think I know what the ultimate goal looks like, and I try to keep my feet on the right road.  That’s not a very good answer, I know,” she said helplessly, “But be fair, you’re asking some tough questions.”

Shard looked pleased with herself.

The painted elder handed Taryn a bit of squash.  “We have known many humans,” he said.  “T’was human magic that made the Farasai, to be their beasts of burden.  Even after our retreat from their world, they have pursued us.  They come like waves upon the sand, again and again throughout our history, always to conquer and to destroy.  In the time of my father’s father, many humans came to this Valley that seemed to be of a different kind.  They came to settle, to farm.  My father’s father and his clan believed them to mean peace.  We brought the humans gifts of friendship.  We aided them through their first winters.  Their numbers grew and aye, the rules that they had first followed began to change.”

The elder smiled, while all around them, dark mutters and stamping began to grow among the other horsemen. 
“The humans came to us with bridles,” he said.  “They still hang upon our walls.”

Taryn recoiled, thunderstruck.  For a moment, she could see him with a bit in his mouth and blinders on his eyes.  She felt sick and cold.

The elder’s smile widened, his eyes turning to slits in his wrinkled face.  “You don’t want to believe,” he said gently.

“
Slavery is a fact in human history,” she said, dropping her eyes.  “But it’s still appalling.  Yes, I believe you.  And no.  No, I don’t want to.”

“
Those humans believed they were right, I am sure,” the elder continued.  “T’was right to take our fields, to make slaves of us, because we were not true people in their eyes.  We were worked by these men.  We were starved and beaten when we did not obey.  And as their numbers grew, aye, so did the rules change again.  When we were injured, we were killed by them.  Our hides were taken.  Our flesh made into their meat.  Mates were separated and we were bred to one another so the humans could command our coloring.  At times, our females were used for their pleasure.”

“
Who would—?!”  Taryn clapped a hand over her mouth to stop the rest of that question, her cheeks flaming, but the elder merely smiled.

“
When the rebellion came, we repaid them.  Let every debt be answered, and it was, aye, answered in exact kind.”

“
You…”  Taryn stared at him, trying to convince herself that he didn’t mean what…what that sounded like he meant.

“
We harnessed them.”  The elder raked his gaze across the lodge, his voice rising and strong.  There were no mutters now, no horseman who would meet his eyes.  “We bridled them.  We labored them in our fields.  We starved them and we slew their injured.  We gave them the hides and the flesh of their dead.  We took their women.  Aye.  We did this in vengeance, and then we slaughtered them all.  This is how we have chosen to follow our truth.  This is how we showed our integrity.  Do not forget.”

Silence.

The elder returned his gaze to Taryn.  “We are all upon that narrow road, human.  And we are all accountable for the steps we take.  You speak with wisdom.”  He extended his hand.  “I am the Morathi of kraal-Rucombe, and we are well-met.”

“
Thanks,” she said weakly, her mind still spinning with the awful imagery he had invoked.  She gripped his wrist gingerly; it felt as thin as paper wrapping sticks.  “My name is Taryn.”

The shock that answered this innocuous offering came in the sound of a hundred horsemen stamping at once, but the Morathi merely cocked his head, his ears tipping forward through his white hair.  He kept his grip on her forearm.

“Names are sacred here,” he said.  “You should guard yours better.”

“
From you?”

More stamping.  The filly at the elder
’s side dropped her handful of meat and gaped.

Morathi smiled. 
“Will you trust me so easily?”

Taryn shrugged. 
“Trust has to start somewhere.”

“
Then I will be accountable.”  Morathi inclined his head with aged dignity and released her wrist.  He rested his hand briefly on Taryn’s shoulder, then backed away from the table and headed for the door.

His leaving began an exodus, mostly silent, as horsemen left their emptied bread-plates.  A number of them were staring at her as they moved away.  She could hear the talk starting just beyond the door, but none of it seemed to be in English.  Soon the lodge was nearly empty and the foals came in to clear the tables.

Taryn took a deep breath and turned a shaky smile on Tonka.  “That was tough.  How do you think I did?” she asked.

He didn
’t answer her, but looked around, unsmiling, at Ven.  The black-bodied horsewoman’s sides were heaving, although her face was perfectly still.  “Aye,” she said faintly.  “I do see.”  She turned with a stiffness unnatural to see in a horseman and moved toward the fires, beginning to direct the foals in the cleaning.

Taryn
’s smile faded.  She bent and scooped Aisling, droopy from food, into her arms.  “It was a very good meal,” she said, trying to recapture some shred of her former good-mood.  “For pheasant food.”

Now Tonka smiled, if only a little. 
“I am ashamed to have fed you such miserable fare,” he replied.  “Will you permit me to show you my village, traveler?”

“
Chieftain, I would be honored.”

36.  Memories

“
T
hese are our winter stores.”

Taryn stared enviously at the lodge
’s contents—clay jars stacked four deep and two high along one entire wall, bins filled with vegetables lining the other, with barrels and casks forming a modulated table down the center of the room on which great baskets filled with nuts and dried herbs rested.  There were hooks hanging from the ceiling, mostly empty, for smoked slabs of meat.  The horsemen didn’t appear to have canning as part of their science, but they also didn’t appear to need it.

“
Hunting is usually fair throughout the winter,” Tonka told her.  “The river seldom freezes entirely, and the herds always return to it, even in the snows.  But foraging will be scarce and crop, impossible.  Come to us if you deplete yourself.”

“
Thank you, Tonka.  I hope I don’t have to, but I suspect I probably will.”

“
The sun is low.”  Tonka opened the door and held it for her, his eyes scanning the horizon.  “Stay with us tonight.  I would not have you cross the plains at night.”

“
I can find my way.”  She took her flashlight from her pack, shook it up, and flicked it on to demonstrate its power of illumination.

Tonka smiled, the sort of smile usually reserved by parents for when their child does something at once cute and incredibly dumb. 
“Darkness is not the danger,” he told her gently.  “Rather, the things that dwell therein.”

That was a sobering thought. 
“I, um, I haven’t seen any big bitey-critters yet,” she said.

“
Nor would you,” he countered.  “That being the qualifying factor of a predator’s success.  Yet there are fellcats in the plains, Taryn.  The smoke from our fires, and from yours, keeps them at bay, but I would not have you wandering the plains alone during the time they most often hunt, with the winter coming on and cubs to feed in their dens.  Stay the night, Taryn.”

“
Well, all right, if you insist.”  She put her flashlight away again, drawing in a breath as she stepped out into the evening air and letting it out again as a “Mmmmm.  Is it dinner-time already?”

“
A small meal,” he replied.

“
And poor stuff,” she guessed.  “Fit for fowl.”

He chuckled. 

Taryn’s eyes skipped around the village (the kraal, she corrected herself), pleased to be able to identify the lodges they passed together.  The Jiko lodge, the cooking place, he said, where they had eaten.  The Vyengo Machozi, where the injured and ill were tended, and which was also Ven’s personal space.  The Malalo Doya, where the scouts slept.  The Malalo Lima, where the horsemen he called the field-masters slept, and the smaller lodges he called Banda-dogo, the little barns, that housed the other farmers.

Her feet dragged as her eyes lingered on the
‘little barns’.  She could see the silhouettes of horsemen coming in from the fields, just black shapes pulling carts, weariness showing in every step.  “Tonka,” she said hesitantly.  “Will you show me the bridles Morathi spoke of?”

He glanced at her, his gaze level and assessing.  Without speaking, he touched her shoulder and turned aside.  She expected to be taken to one of the smaller out-buildings, a musty museum somewhere on the outskirts of the kraal.  Instead, he brought her to his own lodge, the Beti Kale, he had called it.  He opened the door and she went inside.

She was a little afraid of what she would find, but it was just someone’s home.  She looked around, her eyes adjusting to the dim light that came in through the door, seeing painted leathers on the wall, a few simple shelves holding small boxes, a tall wooden table whose top was carved with a rearing horseman throwing a runka, a small hearth and a tall stack of firewood, a cup half-filled with water on a bench beside a fur-padded contraption she couldn’t begin to identify.  Taryn went over to puzzle this last object out.  It looked like a cot with one of those carpet-covered cat towers attached at one end.

But there were a number of hide curtains stretched across the room, separating it from another space beyond, and when Tonka went ahead of her to pull them aside, she followed.  Here was the shrine to history and shame that she
’d anticipated.  Here were the walls hanging with bridles and, yes, blinders.  Here was tack and saddles.  Here was a rolled hide and a horsehair whip.  And in one corner, there was something else, something like a metal saw-horse, very thin, with struts edging out both sides. 

Taryn walked up to this object, trying to fathom its purpose.  The front legs
—she guessed it was the front, anyway—stood straight up and down, but the rear ones curved out quite a long way before they arced down.  Old leather straps and buckles hung down from the central bar and from the rear supports.  It was pretty small, relatively speaking, but indefinably ugly.  She couldn’t see any way a horseman could be fixed to it, unless—

“
Was it for children?” she asked, appalled.  “For foals, I mean?”

“
No,” Tonka said quietly.  “It was for humans.”

Taryn looked it over again, more confused than ever. 
“Like…like stocks, or…?  What was it supposed to do?”

Tonka put his hand on her shoulder and drew her away.  He exchanged places with her, got a hold of the device and pulled it out from the wall into the small available space in the center of this hidden room.  He gestured to her
, and she moved obediently to take up position behind the thing.  He aligned her legs with the rear supports and cinched the old leather tight in the rusty buckles.  His hand touched her back, guiding her wordlessly and carefully down so that she lay on the wide bar.  She hugged the front legs of the device as Tonka brought the leather strap attached to the wide bar up and buckled her securely in place.  It was incredibly uncomfortable, bent so far forward on the unyielding metal.  All her weight was on her chest; there was nothing under her hips to feel braced against, just the constant pressure of the rear supports against her stiff legs.  She felt absurdly like she was mooning—

“
Oh sweet God,” she whispered, suddenly understanding.

Tonka
’s hand rested on her head briefly and then he began unharnessing her.  “They called it saddling, I’m told,” he said.  His tone was distant, calm.  “There were other fittings once, to raise the thing, for one.  A restraining vise for the stallion…if he wished to be restrained.  Those were brutal days, Taryn.  T’was more than vengeance.  T’was more than this generation of Farasai should ever have to bear.”

“
But you keep it.”  She stepped away from the saddle, rubbing her thighs compulsively where the restraints had bound her.  “You keep it.  My God, you
sleep
right next to it!”

“
This is the house of our histories,” he replied, holding his palms upward to her.  “And this is a part of our histories.  But they are burdens for a chieftain to bear.  And Morathi is correct.  We must never forget.”  He sighed and waved her on ahead, closing the hide curtains and shutting the awfulness of the room beyond away.  “But this is not your history, Taryn.  Come away.  Share a meal with me and do not think about this place.”

She followed him back to the Jiko lodge, but she had no appetite.  Again, she was
taken to the furthest table where she stood between Tonka and Morathi until the rest of the tables were filled.  There was no evening benediction this time.  There wasn’t really a meal, for that matter.  Dinner took the form of the flat trenchers of bread used as platters during the mid-day meal, nicely soaked with meat juices and spicy sauce, and now toasted and served with little bowls of extra sauce for dipping.  Tonka broke his in half and offered her the largest piece.  She shared it with Aisling, listening to the quiet talk drifting up from the other tables and thinking of saddles.

“
You’ve seen it,” Morathi remarked, eyeing his bread and smiling.

Taryn nodded, giving a pinch of bread a little shake to entice a reluctant Aisling to try it.

“Did you touch them?”

She nodded again, her hand dropping unconsciously to rub at her thigh.

“What did you feel?” Morathi asked.

Taryn could sense the stillness in the room, but she did not allow it to affect her answer. 
“Hatred.”

“
Ah.”  Morathi ate for a while, gazing across the room and into the dying coals of the open ovens.  “Aye,” he said at last.  “The smoke of those poison fires has set a stink that will never blow entirely away.  But why, I wonder, did you feel compelled to seek it out for yourself?”

“
I honestly don’t know.”  She made herself meet his sunken and knowing eyes.  “Maybe I just wanted to see concrete evidence that we humans aren’t the only ones capable of ugly behavior.”

“
Did you think you were?”

“
Well.”  She shrugged, uncomfortably aware of the listening horsemen, and picked at her bread.  “A few weeks ago, I thought humans were the only race of people in the whole world and I thought my world was the only world there was, so yeah, I thought we had a solid lock.”

“
Ah.”

“
When I came to Arcadia and got the official unwelcome from all you fine folks, I knew it wasn’t because I’d done anything,” she said, keeping her eyes on her hands as she passed bread down to her waiting griffin.  “But I also knew you had to have your reasons, and the longer it went on, the worse I knew those reasons had to be.  I’ll be honest,” she said, looking up at Morathi.  “I’m astonished I’m here at all.  I’m astonished that you’re feeding me after what my people did to yours.”

Morathi put his half-eaten trencher down, folded his hands on the table, and leaned in to look back at her. 
“Should I be astonished, Taryn, that you eat what we feed you after what my people have done to yours?  Surely ours was the greater crime, for they believed we were not people when they began their abuses, and we knew well that they were when we inflicted ours.”

“
I hadn’t thought of that.”  She tossed him a dry smile and gave the rest of her bread to Aisling.  “Revenge is a whole lot easier for me to understand.  Even now…”  She stopped and rubbed at her bangs, mostly as an excuse to hide her eyes from his penetrating stare.  But she could still feel it, still hear him listening, and she knew she had to finish.  “Even after I touched that…thing…my first thought was that they got what they deserved.”

Stamping.  Mutters and grunts of dark agreement. 

Taryn looked up into Morathi’s still and watchful face.  “And nobody,” she said softly, “could possibly deserve that.”

Silence dropped over t
he lodge.  Morathi’s eyes closed and opened again on a look more piercing than it had been before.

“
But that doesn’t change how I feel,” Taryn said, and uttered a dispirited little laugh.  “I guess that’s a real backwards slide on that steep road to integrity.”

“
You see it so?”  Morathi seemed genuinely surprised.

“
You don’t?”  Taryn laughed.  “You can’t possibly see my sympathy for that degree of wholesale vindictiveness as a quality of good character.”

“
Shall I tell you what I see?” Morathi murmured.  He cupped her chin in one leathery hand and brought her eyes firmly up to his.  “I see a remarkable creature,” he said, his voice very low but easily carrying.  “One who does not hide her faults to overcome them.  One who struggles.  Who suffers.  And who forgives.  Aye, Taryn.  I see.”  He straightened, releasing her, and smiled.  “Will you sleep with me tonight?”

In spite of the fact that she
’d managed to feed all of her dinner to Aisling, Taryn still managed to choke.  She knew in the next instant, of course, that ‘sleep’ for a horseman meant precisely sleep, but she was still blushing down to the roots of her hair when she said, “Sure.”

“
Why do you color?” the young filly asked.

“
Because I’m deeply honored,” Taryn said, not quite with a straight face.  “Tonka, where’d those chocolate bars go?”

Tonka nodded, and Shard detached herself from the table and went to the corner where foods made the transition from hearth to platters, returning in short order
with the box of chocolate.  Taryn helped herself to a bar, unwrapped it, and broke it into squares, offering the first one to Tonka.

He looked amused, but ate it, and the look of shock as the flavor hit him was definitely worth seeing. 
“Tis for the young, I think,” he said, answering the open curiosity of those around him.  “Very sweet.  Very strange.  But—”  He looked intently at Taryn.  “Are these not all you have?”

She shrugged and smiled at him. 
“I think I’d rather share them out once in good company than hoard them for a few years by myself.”