"Taji." She whispered. Wit followed her out into the dark. The young man stood at the tree line, same as before, except closer now. Close enough Wit could finally make out the shape of him properly and watchful. A face that carried Yennaba's same steady bones beneath decade fewer years of hard living.
He didn't step forward, just waited, one hand raised, until Yennaba raised hers back. Then, slow, he came the rest of the way. "You should not be here." Yennaba said, though her voice cracked with something that argued the opposite. "If you are seen, I was not followed." Taji's English came halting, careful, a language borrowed rather than owned, but every word landed exact where he wanted it. "I made certain." He looked at Wit a long moment, measuring, deciding.
"This is the rancher." Yennaba said. "He cut the rope." Something in Taji's face eased just slightly at that. "Then I owe you a debt I did not expect to owe a white man." "Owe me nothing." Wit said. "Owe your sister the truth instead. That's worth more." Taji's jaw tightened.
He reached into a fold of hide at his hip and drew something out, holding it up between two fingers so the moonlight caught the blade clean. A knife, small, well-made. A handle carved with markings Wit didn't recognize, but Yennaba's whole body went rigid seeing. "This is Askala's." She said, not a question. "I found it." Taji said, "buried shallow near the river camp, where the young warrior died.
Askala claims he lost it the the before hunting. Claims it was stolen. His voice hardened. Except the blade still carried blood in the seam near the hilt. Old blood.
Dried into the wood grain where no honest hunting accident would ever put it. Witt felt something cold settle in his stomach. "You're saying," he said slowly, "Ascala killed his own cousin." "I am saying," Taji answered, "that Ascala's knife killed him." "Whether Ascala's own hand held it that night or another hand acting on his word, I have not yet proven. But the elders will not look past a knife with blood already dried into it. Not once they see it plain." "Then show them, Inaba.
Now." "Good night." "I cannot." Taji's face was grim. "Ascala has grown careful these past weeks. Careful and generous. Rifles have appeared among his closest men. Good rifles.
Repeating rifles, the kind no trading post sells to our people without a name attached that draws questions." Witt went very still. "Where's he getting rifles like that?" he said. Though some cold, certain part part of him a suspected the answer before Tajri as short Taji spoke it. "One who visits the eastern ridge alone. Twice now that I have watched, meeting Ascala where the land dips out of easy sight.