by Kate L. Mary
I had elected to take only the four women who had accompanied me to the Trelite tribe, but the looks the Huni people shot our way made me wonder if keeping our group so small had been the wrong move. We did not have enough people with us to come across as threatening, but we also did not have the numbers to defend ourselves if the Huni decided to attack.
We had not yet crossed the threshold into the village when I spotted a woman I recognized from Saffron’s house and paused. She had been working the day I attacked Lysander, had probably even been in the kitchen when it happened. Did this mean the Outliers working in the city were not really being held prisoner? Had Asa lied to me?
“Rekha,” I called. “How is it that you are here? We were told all the Outliers are now locked in the quarters outside Sovereign City.”
The woman had never seemed friendly, but when she narrowed her gray eyes on me now, they shone with malice I had not been expecting. “I fled after you attacked the mistress’s son. I knew the Sovereign would retaliate, and I was afraid of what they would do to me. It saved me.”
“Then it is true?” Emori asked her. “The Outliers are now slaves?”
“They are,” Rekha said, her eyes still on me. “Because of you.”
Mira pushed past me so she was standing in front of the Huni woman. “Indra saved me. You know it. You were there.”
“She brought death to her people and slavery to mine.”
Rekha’s mouth scrunched up, giving me warning, but I was still unprepared when she spit at my feet. I had not expected her anger to go that deep. Had not imagined she would think I was to blame for what the Sovereign had done.
Around me, my people shifted as if moving for their weapons.
“No.” I lifted my hand before they could do anything rash. “I am sorry for your pain. I did what I felt I had to, and I did not think about how it would affect anyone else. But you cannot blame me for the things other people have done. Is it my fault the Sovereign do not think we are people?” I scanned the other Huni men and women gathered around before once again focusing on Rekah. “It is not my fault, but if it helps ease your pain to put the blame on my shoulders, I will accept it.”
The other woman said nothing.
When the hatred in her expression did not ease, I turned my gaze from her, once again scanning the other people. “We wish to see your Head.”
The crowd shuffled, but only a moment passed before a man stepped forward. He was as tall as one of the Fortis, but thin like the skeleton trees, making it seem as if a strong wind would blow him away. Dozens of teeth and claws were pierced through his skin, trophies from the animals he had killed, telling me that he was a great hunter and therefore much tougher than his scrawny frame made him appear.
“I will take you,” he said, his voice deep for someone so gaunt.
The crowd parted when the thin man turned, allowing him to lead us to the center of the village and toward a blazing fire. The Huni men and women we passed watched us in silence, but other than Rekah, we were met with no real hostility. Only wariness, as if they were unsure what kind of omen our visit would bring.
Just past the huts, which were made of wood and mud and much like the ones we had lived in before the Fortis burned our village to the ground, sat the skeleton trees that signified the beginning of the wastelands. They were intermingled with others that were currently bare thanks to winter, but not pale and lifeless like the ones in the wastelands. In the distance, the barren land stretched out as far as the eye could see, the sandy ground flat except where it was broken up by rocks or long dead trees.
A woman ducked out of a nearby hut, and it took only one look at her to know she was Head of the Huni people. A crown of rawlin feathers sat atop her head, their plumes bright red against the dark skin of her shaved scalp, and piercings decorated her face and ears. Claws from birds had been stuck through her earlobes, while the teeth of forest cats ran in a line across her forehead.
“I am Ontari, Head of the Huni people.” When she stopped in front of us, her gaze moved over my face, stopping on the new passage marking on my chin. “You are Winta?”
“We were Winta. Now we are Windhi.” I waved behind me, to the other members of my tribe. “I am Indra, Head of the Windhi tribe. I have come for an audience with you and your people.”
Ontari did not blink, as if the knowledge that we had created a new tribe and I, a woman of the former Winta people, was Head did not surprise her. She did, however, look hesitant when she glanced behind me toward the rest of her tribe.
After a pause, her gaze moved back to me. “What is it you want from us?”
“We have come to ask you to join us.” I raised my voice to ensure that the people gathered around would also be able to hear me. “We want to wage war on the Fortis. We want to destroy them as they have tried to destroy us, and we want to free our people.”
“Impossible,” the Head muttered. Then louder she said, “We are not warriors. Not like they are. Even together, the Outliers are no match for the Fortis.”
“You are great hunters.” I waved at her to acknowledge the many teeth and claws piercing her skin.
“Of animals,” Ontari corrected me.
“It is no different.”
I kept my gaze on the Head as I held my hand out to Mira, and she passed me the bag we had carried with us across the wilds. I did not blink, did not look away from Ontari as I reached inside, doing my best not to react when my fingers wrapped around the damp hair. When I pulled out the severed head of the Fortis hunter I had killed only the night before, a gasp moved through the crowd.
Ontari took a step back, outraged. “What is this?”
“This is a Fortis hunter who died at my hands.” I dropped the head, and when it landed on the ground at her feet, the thud was loud amidst the silence that had spread through the village. “He is only one out of hundreds. All of them dead because of us. My tribe has been hunting the Fortis since they destroyed our village, and I have been killing them for even longer than that. The first time I killed one, I was alone in the woods. I took him down with my bow.” I raised the weapon over my head, turning so I could look the Huni villagers over. “He fell to the ground and bled and died, and as I watched it happen, I discovered a warrior had been hidden inside me my whole life. One who will no longer do nothing while her people suffer.” I turned back to face the Head. “So I killed another, and then another. They sent parties out to search for me, but they could not find me. I have taught my people—” I waved my bow toward the women at my back, “—to kill as well, but we want to do more. We want to take the fight to the Fortis, to destroy them so we can finally free ourselves from the Sovereign. But we cannot do it alone.” My gaze was focused on Ontari when I lowered the bow to my side. “Inside the city we work together, but out here we are strangers. It makes us weak. If we work together, we can do this. We can save our people. We may not be warriors like the Fortis, we may not train from birth, but we have the advantage because we are Outliers. We have had to fight and struggle to survive in the wilds. We do not depend on anyone the way the Fortis do.”
My voice rang through the village, echoing off the trees and coming back to me. The Huni gathered around were silent, but they did not seem frightened at the prospect of fighting, and neither did Ontari.
“Have you spoken to the other tribes?” she asked once the echo of my voice had faded to nothing.
“You were the first,” I told her, “but we plan to visit the Mountari today, and the Trelite tomorrow. The other tribes know what great hunters you are. If I tell them you are already with us, they will be more likely to join the fight.”
The Head looked around, studying her people. Whether she was gauging their reactions or trying to decide if they were as strong as I claimed they were, I did not know. Their expressions ranged from determined to terrified, but no one spoke up to say they did not want to join the fight. If anything, it seemed like they wanted Ontari to agree.
“It has been many deca
des since the Outliers worked together,” she said after a prolonged silence. “Do you really believe we can do this?”
“We are not at war, and we have not been for a long time. Plus, we have a common enemy. A common problem. Inside Sovereign City, they do not look at us and see Huni or Mountari. The Fortis and Sovereign see us as one. We are only Outliers to them, nothing else. If we want to stop them, we must act as one.”
“She is right,” said the slender Huni man who had greeted us when we first came into the village.
Ontari did not act like she thought he was talking out of turn when she turned to look at him. “You believe we can do this, Arkin?”
“I do,” the man said, and then tilted his head toward me. “Indra speaks the truth. We are hunters, and it should not matter if what we are hunting is a man or a beast. They both bleed when they are cut.” He lifted the spear in his hand. “They can both be taken out by a spear.”
Ontari’s gaze moved across her people. Many of them were nodding in agreement, and this time when I studied them, the determination on most of their faces was stark. They wanted this as much as my tribe did. They wanted to be free of the Fortis and the Sovereign.
The Head saw it, too, and when she turned her gaze back on me, I knew she was going to agree before she had even opened her mouth. “We will join you, Indra of the Windhi people. We will fight the Fortis with you, and when they are gone, we will take the Sovereign out as well.”
A cry rose up among the crowd, and the sound filled me with a sense of relief. Even to myself, I had not admitted my concerns over how the Huni would react, but now that they had agreed to our proposition, I realized the depths of my worry. Without them, it would have been pointless to go to the Mountari or Trelite for help. The Huni not only had the most hunters, since the number included both the men and the women, but they were also the largest of the Outlier tribes. They did not marry or even believe in monogamous relationships, and the number of lovers a person had during their lifetime was almost as important to them as the number of animals they killed. Because of this, they procreated more than the rest of us, with some of the women having their first child when they were still in their teens. Just children by Winta standards.
As we followed Ontari and Arkin through the village, I saw evidence of this everywhere I looked. We passed teen girls whose bellies were swollen with child or had a baby to their breast, as well as toddlers and small children in the dozens tottering across the barren ground. Everywhere I looked I was met with proof of how different our two tribes’ values were. This was why the Winta had always kept their distance. It was an uncomfortable reminder, because it made me doubt the very alliance we had just created, and I could tell by the expression on the faces of the women with me that they were feeling the same things.
Not all of them, though. Xandra studied the people we passed with interest, reminding me of the love she had embraced and how it never would have been accepted in our old tribe. It also reminded me of what she had said to me after Asa left the caves. She had told me not to let anyone tell me who to love. While I still could not say whether I loved the Fortis man I had shared my bed with, the very fact that I had done it told me that I was in no position to judge how these people chose to live. We all had a right to live our lives, which was exactly what we were fighting the Sovereign for.
We were more than halfway through the village when I caught sight of a young boy, no more than five years old. He held a stick like a cane, dragging his left leg behind him as he walked, and on closer inspection I noticed it was because he had no foot. The foot had not been cut off, though. It was rounded like a club, almost as if all the bones had been balled up while he was still forming in his mother’s womb.
We reached the center of the village, and my attention was drawn away from the boy when Ontari sat, motioning for us to follow. Arkin knelt at her side so he could fill cups with a light brown liquid, passing them out to those of us gathered around.
Once we all had one, Ontari lifted hers in the air. “To our treaty.”
I raised my own cup before taking a drink. The liquid was bitter to the taste, reminding me of the drink the Trelite had given me when we first visited them. Thankfully, unlike when I was in the other village, I did not feel compelled to drink the whole thing.
Arkin stayed close to Ontari’s side, and the way they interacted made it clear they were intimately familiar with one another—a relationship that no doubt elevated his position within the tribe. When he reached out and fondled Ontari right in front of us, heat licked at my cheeks and I had to look away. Like me, the other women in my tribe averted their eyes, with the exception of Emori, whose face scrunched up in disgust.
Ontari’s eyebrows lifted and the line of teeth on her forehead rose with them. “We live so close to one another, and yet we come from very different worlds.”
“You must forgive Emori,” I said, in hopes of smoothing things over. “She was unmarried when our tribe was wiped out, but not unaware of the ways of men and women. A Sovereign man introduced her to those, as he did with me.”
“She is not alone in that. We are no strangers to the brutality of their people.” Ontari waved Arkin away as she turned her gaze on Emori. “I have great admiration for people who choose to harness their primal natures, but it is not something we do here in our village. It is a shame not everyone can enjoy the flesh as we do, but I wish for us to exist in peace and have no desire to make you uncomfortable. Out of respect for your position, I will do my best to rein in my thirst while you are around.”
“I appreciate your consideration,” Emori said, but the hardness in her eyes told a different story.
She had not been easy to live with since Asa’s visit, and I feared it would not be long before her hostility boiled over. Xandra and I had even discussed leaving Emori behind today, but we worried it would only push her closer to the edge. Now, though, I found myself wishing we had left her back in the caves.
If Ontari noticed the hostility, there was nothing in her demeanor that said she took offense to it. She simply took another drink from her cup, her gaze moving over us as she did.
“We feel that we should select a common place in the forest where the Heads of all the tribes can meet,” I said, hoping to keep the focus on the alliance and off Emori. “Something that is neutral and non-threatening.”
Ontari lowered her cup. “It is a good idea. Did you have a place in mind?”
“The clearing at the pond.”
The Head nodded, and the crown of feathers that sat atop her head bobbed, somehow managing to remain in place despite her smooth scalp. “That will be sufficient for us.”
She lifted her cup again, tipping it in my direction, and I copied the gesture. I had no desire to drink more of the bitter liquid, but I did anyway. Like Ontari, I wanted our tribes to get along.
The Head smiled as she took a sip as if aware of what I was thinking, and the expression softened her features. It made her look younger. More attractive.
“Indra.” Xandra touched my knee. “We must head out soon if we want to make it to the Mountari village.”
“Yes.” I put the cup down, grateful to have a legitimate reason not to drink more of the liquid, and turned to Ontari. “We will plan a meeting tomorrow evening. At sunset. For now, we must take our leave.”
Ontari stood, as did Arkin, and the feathers on her head bobbed again. “We will be there, Indra of the Windhi.”
As we were leaving the Huni village, I noticed yet another child with an odd deformity. This time it was a hand that was shriveled and useless, and half the size of the other. When I tore my gaze from her, I saw another girl who bore a hole where her mouth and nose should have met, and another child whose head was misshapen. I had never seen anything like this before, but since the Huni slept with one another unabashedly, paying little attention to bloodlines, I attributed the deformities to that. It was yet another reason why the Winta valued marriage and had chosen to live with one partner their
whole lives.
19
The Mountari village sat at the edge of the Lygan Cliffs, right where the black rocks met the wilds, and like the Huni, they were hunters. Only their efforts were more for sport than food, which in my mind made them twice as intimidating as the tribe we had just left.
We had not yet reached the outskirts of their village when we happened upon a group of four Mountari women in the process of carrying lygan skins full of water back from the pond. They ranged in age from a girl of around fourteen to a woman I guessed to be past her fiftieth year, and all four of them were dressed in lygan skins. The bright red and purple scales of the creatures contrasted with the snowy forest, while at the same time shimmering under the afternoon sun.
The women paused when they spotted us, and I prepared myself for another hostile greeting, but they seemed neither wary, nor angry at finding us so close to their village. Only surprised.
When we were still a good distance away, the oldest woman called out, “You are Winta.” She watched us approach with gray eyes that were nearly the same shade as her hair, which was a mess of tangled curls that went down to the middle of her back. Her expression was curious, but unguarded. “We thought you were all dead.”
“We were Winta,” I said when we had stopped in front of her. “But we have formed a new tribe. I am Indra, Head of the Windhi people, and I have come to seek council with your Head.”
The woman’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “A woman Head?” She pressed her lips together as she shifted the bulging lygan skin in her hand, her gaze sweeping over me but giving away nothing about what she was thinking. “I am Zuri, wife of Roan, Head of our tribe.”
It was a stroke of luck to run into someone so important before we had even made it to the village, and even better that she did not seem upset by our presence. Hopefully, it was also a sign that the Mountari were friendlier than we had always thought they were.