“No!” The girl put out a hand. She was frowning and she certainly regarded me with no liking.
“Yes!” Ravinga denied her. She took two steps forward and I now saw that she held a round pendant swinging from a chain. At her gesture I bowed my head, then the chain was in place about my throat, and I looked down to see resting on my breast the finely wrought mask head of a sandcat fashioned from that ancient red gold which we seldom see in these times. I was well aware through Kura of good workmanship and had heretofore believed that no one could surpass my sister. Yet there was something in this which I had never seen before. The inset yellow gems forming the eyes almost appeared to have life.
“To you,” Ravinga said. Then she repeated some words I could not understand. Once more breaking into the common tongue she added:
“This is for you alone and it shall be a key to that which is meant. Do not let it go from you.”
When I protested that such a piece was worth a fortune she shook her head.
“It goes where it will. Now it is yours—I think—” She frowned a little. “No, the fate of another is not for my telling—take it, Hynkkel, and learn.”
I had other luck that day, obtaining a very fine piece of turquoise which I knew would delight Kura, and I returned home, the cat head still on my breast, Mieu croon-purring on the top of my loaded yaksen.
However, I quickly found that I was wrong in believing that Ravinga’s unexpected gift was a mark of good fortune. That I speedily discovered shortly after I reached the rock island which was home for my House. One travels best by night and certainly never under the full punishment of the sun, and so it was dawn when I passed the last of the towering carven sentry cats and saw my brother and Kura both heading towards me as I plodded wearily along.
Kura I expected, for my sister was always impatient to learn how well her wares had sold and what raw materials I had bought to build up her store. However, that Kalikku would pay any attention was certainly new.
As usual he was fighting his mount as he came. To Kalikku any animal must be harshly mastered, and most of his, so ridden, were so vicious that none other of the family chose to go near them. He felt always deprived because the days of war when one family or clan turned against another in open battle had passed, listening eagerly and with close attention to my father’s stories of past engagements. Hunting and forays for caravan raiders were all he might look to, and who would become, he thought, a hero from such petty trials of strength?
I halted, waiting for them to join me, which they did speedily, Kalikku reining in with a swift cruelty which made his oryxen rear, sending sand showering. Mieu sat up and growled, turning a very unfriendly eye upon my brother.
“Foot padder”—that was one of the least cutting of the names my brother could call me and did—”make haste. Your labors are—” He did not finish; instead he leaned forward and stared, not eye to eye, but rather at the pendant I still wore.
The oryxen snorted and danced sideways as his rider urged the animal closer to me. “Where got you that?” my brother demanded. “How much of our father’s store money did you lay out for it? Kura,” he said to my sister, “perhaps it was your market profit this one has plundered.”
Now he favored me with that ever-present challenge I had seen most of my life, silently urging me to retort either by fist or voice. And, as ever, I refused to give him the pleasure he had once taken, when we were very young, of beating me at will.
“It was a gift.” Beneath my journey cloak my hands clenched and then by the force of my will loosened fingers again.
“A gift!” My brother laughed scornfully. “From whom could such as you receive that! Though I wager you certainly would not have the spirit to take it by any force.”
Kura moved closer also. Seeing the interest in her eyes I slipped the pendant from my head and handed it to her. She turned it round and round, running her fingers over it. “No,” she said musingly, “this is not from the hands of Tupa” (she mentioned one of the greatest artists of our people). “It is too old and also it is—” She hesitated and then added, “Truly finer work than I have ever seen. Whence did it come, brother?”
“From Ravinga, the dollmaker of Vapala, whom I have met several times in the market.”
My sister held it as if she were caressing the fashioning of stones and metal.
“Whence did she get it, then?”
I shrugged. “That I do not know and—
However, I had no time to finish what I would say, for Kalikku made a snatch for it, one which Kura was fast enough to avoid. “It is a treasure for a warrior, not for one who labors by his will.” He proclaimed loudly, “Rightly such is mine!”
“No.” For the first time I refused to be bullied. During all the night hours of my travel, that had rested not far from my heart. A belief had grown stronger in me with every step that it was indeed now a part of me. I did not really know what it portended nor why I should feel it now so but I did.
“No?” My brother showed his teeth in a grin like that of a sandcat seeing its prey at easy distance from it. “What is this dollmaker then to you that she gives you a treasure and you would hold it—your mat mate?”
“Stop it!” Kura seldom raised her voice. Ofttimes she was so intent upon her thoughts and plans for her work that she hardly seemed to be with us.
She dropped chain and pendant into my hand again. “If Hynkkel says this is a gift, then that is so. And one does not take gifts except for good reason, nor does one then surrender such to another. Hynkkel, I would like to look upon it again and perhaps make a drawing of it for my files, if you are willing.”
“I am always at your service,” I said. Among us we have no slaves—that is for the barbarians of Azhengir. Our servants are free to come and go as they well please—but usually as a caste they have their own well-earned positions and a different kind of pride. That I should be as a servant in my father’s house was because I was a failure as a son, a son he thought was worthy of his notice. I was early a failure at those very things a warrior must know or do.
Bodily my strength was never that of my brother and I disliked all that went to make up his life. Though I had buried deep within me the pain—I always knew that my father denied me—I was content in other ways. I worked with our herds, I was careful as a tender of our algae beds, and I was always willing to go to the market. However, to my father’s mind I was no proper one to inherit his name. It is true that I have always been something of a dreamer. I longed to make beauty with my hands as did Kura—but the one awkward figure of a cat guardian I chipped from stone was far from any masterpiece, though I stubbornly set it up beside my door, even as my father and brother had their “battle” standards beside theirs.
So, there being no middle way, I was a servant and that I tried to take pride in—making sure I served well. Thus I used a servant’s response to my sister.
“You are needed.” She drew a little away from me now as if, though she had taken my part, that was only in fairness and now we were back again in the same relationship we had been for most of my life. “Siggura has come into heat. We must have the feast of choosing. There is much to be done. Already messages to other clans have been sent by the drummers.”
Kalikku laughed. “Do you not envy her, Kura—the feasting, the coming of many wooers?” His tone was meant to cut as might the lash of his riding whip.
She laughed in turn but hers was honest laughter. “No, I do not.” She lifted her hands and held them out, letting fall the reins of her well-trained mount. “It is what these can do which gives my life meaning. There is no envy in me for Siggura.”
Thus I had come back to pressure of hurry. Not all of our women are designed to wed. Some never come into heat. I do not know whether many of them regret that or not. But I did know that Siggura was one who would make the most of this chance to be the center of feasting and attention which might last for a week or more, until she was ready to announce her mate choice.