“They outnumber us,” said Feather Cloak.
“Yes! We must strike first, and swiftly.”
“Just as you have done today.”
Kansi glanced back at Zuangua, who shook his head, looking impatient and bored. “We have waited long enough,” Kansi-a-lari said. “We have waited too long!”
Like her uncle, The Impatient One attracted the eye. Hers was the beauty of the jaguar, deadly and fascinating. She prowled among men, and few had the strength of will to resist her. With women, though, Kansi-a-lari behaved differently, knowing she could not sway them with a hard stare or a provocative hand placed on her hip. She liked men better, because she found them easier to control.
“If we strike,” Feather Cloak asked, “to what purpose do our warriors fight and die?”
“To test the strength of humankind. I have sent scouts east and west. West is wasteland, but there is a great city northeast of here that we may profitably strike. They are rebuilding. They will not be ready for us.”
“So you have said, but what do you intend?”
“Kill those who resist. Bring worthy captives home to offer to the gods. Fill our storehouses with their grain and their treasures. Set in place a governor to rule their farmers and merchants. That way their taxes will serve us, not our enemies.”
Feather Cloak waited while the assembly discussed this proposition in low voices, among themselves, all the blood knives who remind silent, as if they had already known what she was going to say. In the cavern, no wind blew, and despite the cool weather it had gotten stuffy. The great golden wheel of the assembly, resting behind her, remained still. Only in the wind did it turn. In this way it represented the people: each discrete emerald feather was visible at rest, but when in motion the many individual parts blended to become one bright whole, indivisible to the eye’s sight.
She sighed, seeing that she must speak although she knew it would do no good. “So soon you will press past the White Road? It is better to rebuild our own cities and till our own fields until our feet are firmly planted in the roots of this Earth.”
Kansi-a-lari shrugged. “Human slaves can plant and build for us. With their labor, we leave more of our own people free to fight. So it was done in the days before.”
“In the days before,” said Feather Cloak, knowing her words clipped and short and irritated and knowing as well that to show annoyance was to weaken her own argument, “we made enemies who worked in concert to cast us out of Earth entirely! Have we learned nothing from the past?”
“Yes!” Kansi had that jaguar’s grin that made men wonder and sweat. “They hate us. They fear us. But we have to learned to strike while they are weakened so they cannot attack us again! It is time to leave the ways of exile behind and embrace what is ours, this world we were sundered from for so long!”
“No. It is too soon. Let the young ones grow. Let us rebuild and make ourselves strong first.”
Kansi turned in a circle, marking each person standing in the council chamber: the elders and the younger leaders, the warriors and the craftsmen, those born in exile and those so recently returned from the limbo of the shadows. The blood knives watched her hungrily.
“I have walked among humankind, those who live in these days, not the ones you remember from the past. I was born in exile, but I have not waited in exile and lost my spirit and my anger.”
Eldest Uncle tugged on an ear, perhaps only to hide his irritation with his only child.
“Do you insult us, who have endured exile with you?” demanded White Feather.
“I say what I have to say. Listen! I have seen that humankind cannot be trusted. Especially not those who call themselves the mathematici. They are the ones who know the secret of the crowns. They are the ones who could harm us again. Therefore: strike now! If she who sits as Feather Cloak will not lead us, then I will.”
Among the warriors came a general stamping of feet and pounding of spear butts on the ground, but Feather Cloak shushed this rumble by raising a hand.
White Feather stepped forward. They had prepared for this.
“I say what I have to say!” White Feather displayed Feather Cloak’s twin daughters, one in each arm. Their black hair peeped out of the striped cloth wrapped around those plump baby bodies. The little ones were alert, watchful, quiet. “Those of you who walked in the shadows do not truly understand what became of this land in exile. We endured a great drought. Of water. Of life. We died! The carcasses of our mothers and aunts and fathers and uncles littered the land because none had the strength to send them to the gods!”
