Ammonite

“So,” Thenike said eventually. “How will you go to them? As Marguerite Taishan, the one who should have ‘done something,’ or as the viajera Marghe Amun, offering advice and mediation on a trata matter?”

Choose, Thenike was saying: choose who you are and where your loyalties lie.

Marghe held the suke that bumped gently against her chest. “How will we get there?”

Thenike seemed to accept the change of mood. “Find out who has a ship going south and is willing to go through the Mouth of the Grave, to High Beaches or Pebble Fleet.”

A picture of the Ollfoss map appeared in Marghe’s head, clear and sharp. She could remember every detail. We remember.

Thenike had said, viajeras remember. Marghe wondered if she would ever grow tired of this new memory.

“Which would be best?”

”A ship to Pebble Fleet would have to travel around the Horn, which would add time to the journey, but then it’s a comparatively short distance overland to Port Central. If we ship to High Beaches, then we can go up the Glass River part of the way… About twenty days’ travel, either way.“

Twenty days. And they would have to wait for a ship. Say a month. What might Danner do in a month?

Thenike was down at the docks, asking after ships south. Marghe stepped out into the sunshine of late morning. There was no breeze and it was already hot. Leifin and two other women were in the fountain courtyard, laughing, talking, drinking wine. Leifin was showing the two women her carvings. She had not noticed Marghe.

The carvings were beautiful. A set of three bowls that fitted together, one inside the other, so perfectly that they appeared to be one bowl instead of three. The wood gleamed softly; Marghe recognized it as the same block Leifin had been carving that morning in the great room when they had discussed her petition to join the family. Next were two hand mirrors, the reflecting surface made of olla. The carving was breathtaking: natural-looking flowers twined around the glass, turned into grasses around the handle. The two women handled the wood carefully, but wistfully; it seemed Leifin was out of luck. They shook their heads and handed the bowls and mirror back. Leifin did not seem dismayed but fished out a large white hip pouch with beautifully worked and braided thongs. She handed it to the nearest woman.

Marghe edged closer to listen. Leifin, with her back turned, would not see her.

“It’s very soft. What is it?”

The other woman took it, fingered it. Leifin studied her with that bird-of-prey gaze, one eye then the other, “The bag of a male goth I trapped.”

Maighe went still. The scrotal sac of a goth. She remembered Thenike’s song, the stones that had been raised so many years ago. Leifin had been there for Thenike’s song. She knew what she had done.

Leifin took back the pouch, tipped some small white bones into her palm. “Goth knucklebones. Those big ones there are its thumbs. Two on each hand. Looks like they’d be strong creatures, doesn’t it? Like they’d be fearsome to hunt. But they’re not. Just like big taars. Docile. But cunning.” She glanced up, saw Marghe, and said, in explanation, “I’d heard how white their fur is, I wanted it. I really wanted that fur. You can do a lot with good fur. You’ve seen what I can do. So I said to myself, how can I get the animal without damaging its fur? A trap, that’s how. A pit. It took me three days to dig it—I’d judged by their tracks that they were big, so the pit had to be good and deep. Then I had to make it invisible. I used stuff from the forest floor so after a while I couldn’t even tell where the pit was myself. Then I hid and waited. You have to be very patient when you’re trapping. It’s like carving.” She gestured to the bowls sitting on the edge of the fountain. “I waited for days, more days than I can remember. I ran out of food after three.”

That helped to explain the weight loss.

“It was dark when it finally came along the trail. It was big, big as a tree, and its eyes glowed in the dark. I think if it hadn’t been for its eyes, I wouldn’t have known it was there. It moved quietly as the coming of spring, pulling barkweed off the trees with enormous hands and stuffing it right in its mouth like it was feast bread.” Leifin nodded to herself, remembering. “Yes, it was very quiet, but I was quieter.”

Marghe imagined Leifin waiting, silent and still, patient. Methodical. She watched the women weigh the knuckles in their hands, roll the pale bones between their fingers. Only a few days ago, they had been part of a living, breathing being.