Worlds That Weren't

His brows went up a little as she sat uninvited, pulling over a stool that was made from a section of split log, flat side sanded and the other set with four sticks. The rushes on the hard-packed clay floor rustled and crackled as she plunked it down and straddled it.

“Yi-ah.” She nodded, a little mollified that he hadn’t used her father’s gift-names. Nobody wanted to be called the daughter of the Stinker or the Friendless. “There’s no feud between the Alligators ’n’ the Bear Creek people, or quarrel between our kin.”

“No feud, no quarrel,” he acknowledged; both clans were of the Cross Plains folk, which meant they didn’t have to assure each other that there was no tribal war going on either. It was more than a little unorthodox for a woman to go through the ritual, anyway.

“How’d you know who I was?” she added, curious, as she tore off some of the wheat-and-injun bread he had before him, dipped it in the salt and ate it; that satisfied courtesy, in a minimal sort of way.

He was supposed to be a sharp man, but as far as she knew they’d never met-her family had lived solitary. Robre was famous, after a fashion: Sonjuh dawtra Pehte had begun acquiring a little notoriety only in the last few weeks.

“Figured. Old Pehte had red hair like yours before he went bald, ’n’ ’sides that, you favor him in your looks.” He ate a piece of the bread himself, which meant he had at least to listen to her; then he went on: “He was a dab hand with a tomahawk, too; saw him win the pig ’n’ turkey here at Dannulsford once when my father brought me, must be ten years ago now.”

Sonjuh tossed her head, sending the long horse-tail of her hair swishing. Being unmarried-likely she would be anyway at nineteen, even were her father someone else-she wore her hair down and tied back with a snakeskin band, in a torrent the color of mahogany reaching to between her shoulder blades; a thick band of freckles ran across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Any man of the Seven Tribes would have accounted her comely, snub-nosed face and red lips and the long smooth curves of her figure as well, until he saw the wildness in those haunted leaf-green eyes.

“Nice throw, too, missie,” Robre continued. “Pehte must’ve taught you well.”

“I missed, ” she snapped. “Wanted to split his ugly face!”

Robre laughed, a quieter sound than most men’s mirth, then stopped when he realized she wasn’t even smiling.

“Welcome to a share,” he said a little uneasily, indicating the pitcher of corn beer and clay jug of whiskey.

“Didn’t come to drink,” she said, after taking a token sip from the beer jug; refusing a man’s liquor was a serious insult. “I came to talk business.”

The young man’s black brows went up farther. “Shouldn’t your…oh.”

Sonjuh nodded. “My father’s dead.” Oh, merciful God, thank You he died first of all. “So’s my mother. So’s my three sisters. I saw-”

Of itself, her hand shot out and grabbed Robre’s glass. She tossed back the raw spirits and waited with her eyes clenched shut until the sudden heat in her stomach and a wrenching effort of will stopped the shaking of her hands and pushed away the pictures behind her eyelids. When she looked back up, Robre was frowning at her left forearm, where a bandage had slipped from a healing wound. A patch of skin had been removed-neatly, the way a skinning knife would do it in skilled hands.

She tugged the sleeve down over the rawness and went on: “Didn’t come for sympathy, either. Like I said, I’ve got business to talk with you, Robre Hunter.”

He took a pull at his mug of beer, wiped the back of one big calloused hand across his mouth, and nodded. “I’m listening, missie.”

That was more than she’d expected, if less than she’d hoped. “I didn’t have brothers. My pa didn’t hold with hiring help, either, so from my woman-time I’ve been doing a son’s work for him. Hunting, too.” She took a deep breath. “I know my pa wasn’t well liked-”

Across the table, a polite lack of expression said as plainly as words: He was about as disliked as a man can be and not be outlawed. Or just plain have his gizzard cut out.

More than one had tried, too, but Stinking Pehte had been a good man of his hands, and it had always gone the other way. All fair fights and within the letter of the law, but killing within the clan didn’t make you any better liked either. One or two was to be expected, in a hot-blooded man, but public opinion thought half a dozen excessive; the clan needed those hands and blades.

“-but he was a good farmer, ’n’ no one ever called him lazy. We got our crop in before we were hit. Not much, but we sold most here in Dannulsford. Deer hides ’n’ muskrat, too, ’n’ ginseng, and potash from the fields we were clearing, ’n’ soap ’n’ homespun me ’n’ my ma ’n’ sisters made. The posse got back most of our cabin goods ’n’ tools, ’n’ our stock; then there’s the land, that’s worth something.”