The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (13 page)

His lips twisted, and he cupped her chin. “Beautiful
Corn Maiden, do not fret. We will do all we must in good time. My
priority is to secure the peace in the tribehold. Now that the Bone
Whistler is dead, no one but you can use the Bone Flute. There is
no immediate danger from a dead man’s bone.”

Vessia blew a raspberry after he left. Without
telling him the truth, that Xerpen still lived, she could not press
the urgency of their mission. She couldn’t even tell him that
Xerpen had stolen her wings. She had brought this on herself.
Nonetheless, his patronizing dismissal irked her.

She assumed the delay would be only a matter of
days, but it took much longer than that to mount the expedition.
Tasks popped up like voles on a prairie. Before the assembled crowd
in the center plaza, Vio changed his Shining Name from the Skull
Stomper to the Maze Zavaedi. He announced that the White Lady, his
wife, had slain the Bone Whistler. Most people imagined they had
seen this with their own eyes, and the news encountered
embellishment rather than doubt as it spread from the tribehold to
the more distant clans.

Vio made other proclamations as well. He declared
amnesty to all Morvae who swore to respect a return to the old
laws. He freed all slaves (most of whom were war captives) in the
tribehold and declared no new slaves would be taken. (He paid for
the slaves he freed from the personal treasure amassed by the Bone
Whistler.) He negotiated terms with each individual clan, from
great to small. Vessia could help him in none of this.

Not that he asked.

Vio took over the Bone Whistler’s home. It was
commodious by human standards, but it still reminded Vessia of a
cave. There were three levels, with a room for housing goats and
aurochsen on the semi-subterranean level, a kitchen and eating room
that opened on a balcony on the next level and above, a sleeping
room with a ladder to a flat roof. The narrow clay throats of two
ovens opened into a large hearth in one corner of the kitchen. Near
this was a raised platform covered with rugs where guests could be
entertained and fed. In hot weather, the heat from the ovens was
overwhelming, and dining moved to the balcony.

Vessia was familiar with the arrangement because a
similar, if less elaborate, system was used in Yellow Bear. She had
never baked for herself, however. In her time as a “human” she had
lived first with Old Man and Old Woman, who took care of her, and
then as an independent Tavaedi, dancing spells for people in
exchange for food and goods. Much of the time, she had hunted and
picked her own food in the forest. If she happened not to earn or
catch a meal on a given day, she had simply let her tummy
rumble.

As Vio’s wife, this was not an option. Every day, he
had guests to the house that had to be fed. At first, the slaves
who came with the house prepared the feasts, but then Vio freed the
slaves (though they left sullenly, having nowhere else to go),
rather than look like a hypocrite.

“I made others free their war captives,” he told
Vessia. “I cannot keep slaves myself.”

She agreed; except she, not Vio, now had to do all
the tasks the slaves had done. Baking human food took an
unbelievable amount of labor. If she began pounding corn at dawn,
she was lucky if she had a loaf of cornbread by middle meal, when
the guests arrived.

One of the clans who had sworn loyalty to Vio tried
to assassinate him, not from fidelity to the Bone Whistler, but in
an attempt to put forward one of their own as the new War Chief.
Vessia’s first feeling when she heard the news was relief; they had
been invited to middle meal that day, and now she would only have
to feed Vio and his brother.

“More clans will use violence to seize the Chiefhood
unless we make a show of returning to the old ways,” Vio said to
his brother Vumo over the meal. “We must assemble the patriarchs,
matriarchs and Tavaedies and have them cast stones for a new War
Chief.”

“What’s the point?” Vumo asked sourly. “Why not just
take the Rain Stick and proclaim it yourself?”

Vio frowned. “We don’t know they would choose me.
That’s the purpose of the selection process.”

“Fa! Who else would they choose? They know you
command the hearts of the warriors.” Vumo glanced at Vessia, who
sat in the corner near the hearth. “Among other dangerous allies.
You’ve moved into the War Chief’s house. Could there be any clearer
signal of your intentions?”

“I would leave if another were selected,” said Vio.
“But I admit, there are not many men I would trust in the
position.”

“Not even me?” asked Vumo.

“You?”

“Don’t look so surprised. I was as close to the Bone
Whistler as you. It would reassure the Morvae to have a Morvae War
Chief.”

“And would it reassure the Imorvae?”

“The Imorvae are nothing but a scattered remnant,
Vio.”

“Many more survived than even I had dared hope. They
are angry. They want a guarantee the massacres will never happen
again.”

“The Morvae will never go back to being lesser
Tavaedies, as we were before the Bone Whistler.”

“We?”

“I’m Morvae, aren’t I?”

Vio shifted on the rug. “Wife?” he asked. “How then
for our food?”

Wife
. She whacked the hot coals with a stick.
The flat circles of corn bread she had placed in the oven had
bubbled black on one side, but seemed doughy on the other.

Good enough. She pulled them out, squished bean mash
into them, and rolled them up. She brought the plate of
pishas
to the men. They each took one without acknowledging
her.

“I think we should wait for the elders to make their
choice,” said Vio. “And respect whatever choice they make.”

Vumo chewed his pisha. He made a face. “Did this
fall in the fire?”

He started to put the pisha back in the bowl.

“Finish it,” ordered Vio.

Vumo finished the
pisha
. But he made his
excuses and left as quickly as he could afterward.

Vio ate alone. Vessia had no desire to eat the food
she had cooked. After sunset, she would go flying, hunt a rabbit
and roast it over an open fire in the woods until the juices
dripped and hissed in the flames. Back in the days when she had led
the Eight Uncursed, a band of fearless Aelfae warriors, in the
skirmishes against humans, her friend Hest would have rubbed herbs
into the kill. As much as she had adored Hest’s concoctions, she
had never minded the meat simply roasted, or even raw. Wind and
birdsong were flavor enough.

One could not hear birdsong in the tribehold, nor
frogs croaking; only crickets. Two aurochsen, milch cows, lived on
the level below, and their lowing groaned through the walls.
Always, though, Vessia could hear the mutter of human voices, other
families in adjoining houses, bartering, gossiping, rutting,
fighting. Usually the muttered words were indistinguishable.
Sometimes she heard snatches of phrases.

Next door to the left, lived Vumo and Nangi. Nangi’s
screechy nagging pierced walls. Every night she berated Vumo for
not spending enough time with her and their baby. Vumo’s replies
could not be heard until the end of the fight, when he would
explode, throw something, and storm out of the house. The baby
girl, Amdra, would wail, “Dada! Da! Daaaa Da!” Next door to the
right, lived Gideo, a Morvae, the Bone Whistler’s former Red
Tavaedi. Gideo was their ally now, and he was always polite to
Vessia. But in his own home, his temper flared, and he often beat
his wife. Every sunset, the woman’s pleas for mercy rang out
clearly, then degraded into gargles of pain. Usually around the
same time, Vessia felt the overwhelming need to fly free of the
tribehold.

“Why did you make so many?” Vio asked. He was still
launching a lone and doomed assault on the
pishas
.

“I was expecting more people.”

He grunted.

She stood up.

“Sit,” he ordered. “Eat. We have to finish
these.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“It’s not a request.”

“I don’t take orders from you, Skull Stomper.”

He set down his
pisha
. “If you shoot arrows,
you had better choose your prey with care. I’m in a foul mood
today, pretty Corn Maiden. It makes me grumpy when men try to kill
me. Maybe your woman’s moon is waxing, or maybe you have a fight to
pick. I’ve been neglecting you. I’m sorry. But I suggest you choose
a different day to defy me. Today you will obey me, or you will
spend the night in a cage.”

He shoved the bowl to the edge of the dais, in front
of her. “You sabotaged this food. You will eat it, every last
piece. I won’t let good corn be wasted on your petty whims. And one
other thing: Never call me the Skull Stomper again.”

Vessia, who still stood, whirled suddenly and kicked
the bowl. It smashed into the far wall. The wood shattered, the
pishas
plastered the wall. She pulled out the Bone Flute,
which, for safety’s sake, she always kept on her. She waved it like
a spear.

“No, Vio,” she said. “I will not spend
one more
night
in a cage. And one other thing: Never call me the Corn
Maiden again.

“You fell in love with a girl you held captive, a
girl you could order into a cage or into your tent as you pleased.
That girl died. She died when you threw a stone at her head and
killed her. Perhaps you remember. The woman who awakened in her
place is no captive, no blushing maiden, but a warrior thousands of
years older than you, powerful beyond your petty human dreams, and
with the blood of many of your kind on her hands.

“You fell in love with the Corn Maiden. But you
married the White Lady. You must deal with
me
now. If you
want this marriage to work, there are three vows you must make.

“One. You will never cage me. Never leash me, bind
me, tie me or trap me. I will be free to come and go as I please,
always, by my own whim and not yours.

“Two. You will never force me, neither to bed nor to
bread.

“Three. You will never hit me, with stick or stone
or fire or flesh. You killed me once. This is already your second
chance, more than most killers get. There will be no third.”

He sat with arms crossed, hard as stone, grim and
giving nothing away during her declaration.

Vessia patted the small leather bag tied to her
belt. It only held a dull grey stone, but he didn’t know that. She
delivered her ultimatum. “If you will not abide, I will fly free of
you, Vio. I have wings. I can leave any time I wish, will you or
nil you.”

If he rebuffed her, she knew something would break
inside her. Yet she would be true to her word and leave. She would
not let Xerpen’s prophecy come true.

“You give me three rules, White Lady,” said Vio. “I
deserve three rules in turn.”

This gave her pause. “Very well. Name them and I
will tell you if I can abide them.”

“One,” he said, “Never give yourself to another
man.

“Two. Never aid my enemies.

“Three—and this above all—never lie to me.”

“I can abide by your rules. Can you, by mine?”

“Yes.” He spread his arms. “Can you forgive me for
being a fool? I did not suspect the depth of your unhappiness. When
I realized you were a faery, I thought only of what it would mean
to my cause, not what it meant for you. You have your memories back
then?”

“Yes.”

“You really fought in the War between the humans and
the Aelfae?”

“Yes.”

He looked impressed more than horrified.

She still held the Bone Flute in her hands. “I must
take this to the Kiva Beneath the World. If you cannot come with
me, I must find a way to complete the task alone.”

“Give me more time.”

“It’s been half a moon!”

“Half a moon is precious little time to rebuild what
the Bone Whistler despoiled for fourteen years. The Morvae who
refuse to follow me have been raiding us from the hills. I cannot
lead the assault to clear them out until I am War Chief in name as
well as practice. I could do as Vumo says: take the Rain Stick,
declare myself War Chief and have all who oppose me stoned as
traitors. I could be another Bone Whistler. That’s not what I want.
Let all the others doubt me, Vessia, but I beg
you
not to
doubt me. If the elders declare another War Chief in my stead, I
will not fight. I will step aside and obey the law. Overthrowing
the tyrant means nothing to me if we do not put the law of light
and shadows back in its place.”

“How long will it take?”

“As long as it takes.”

“I don’t like it,” she said. “But I trust you on
this. I will wait. As long as you trust me that hiding the Bone
Flute is of utmost importance.”

“I do.” He slipped his arms around her, stroked her
hair and kissed her neck. “Do I dare ask a faery to my bed?”

She melted in his arms. They did not bother to climb
the ladder to the bedroom, but tumbled together on the rug-piled
dais. He fell asleep as soon as they finished, as was his wont, but
Vessia could not sleep.

The oven fires shed an inconstant red glow on the
walls. The cattle moaned in the room below. In the house on the
other side of the wall, their neighbor bellowed at his wife, flesh
smacked on flesh, and weeping followed. Vessia tensed in her
husband’s arms.

She had promised to abide by his rules in good
faith.
Don’t give yourself to another man, don’t aid an enemy,
above all, don’t lie
. Only now did the obvious occur to her,
that she had already broken all three vows.

“What did you see?” Umbral asked as soon as she
finished her dance and emerged from the Vision. “Which route did
they choose?”

“I… it wasn’t as clear this time,” Dindi lied.
Umbral frowned at her, so Dindi floundered to make her excuse sound
plausible. “The White Lady is trying to…to mislead her captors, so
it’s harder to see her.”