Both at once sounds correct for two women worth knowing. They sat quiet a while after that. Comfortable in a way silence between them had become somewhere without either one marking the exact hour it happened. Yanaba's hand rested near his on the bench between their two chairs. Not touching, not yet.
But close enough that the distance itself had started to feel like its own small deliberate choice. Wit looked at that distance. Thought about closing it. Almost did. Except a sound outside stopped him.
Cold hoofbeats. Distant. Growing. And both of them were on their feet before the thought fully finished forming. The moment gone as quick as it had arrived.
Replaced by the old familiar tightening of a body readying itself for whatever came next. But it wasn't a mob this time. Just Taji alone. Breathless. His horse lathered from hard riding.
"I found her." He gasped. Swinging down before the animal had even fully stopped. "A woman. Widow. Near the river camp.
She saw Askala that night. Saw him leaving the young warrior's fire circle blade still in hand before anyone else in camp had woken to the alarm." Yanaba went very still. "She will speak this before the council. She is afraid." Taji's face was grim. "Askala has threatened her family's standing if she speaks against him.
But I believe given enough courage and enough proof standing beside her, she will." Then we get her both, Whit said. Courage and Proof, whatever it takes. Taji looked between them, something calculating moving behind his eyes. There is more. I overheard something at the ridge, watching Bragg's last meeting with Askala.
They spoke of the chief, of turning suspicion toward my sister once more, should the knife ever surface as evidence against Askala instead. A rumor already being planted, careful, patient, that my sister has turned traitor. That she conspires now with a white rancher against her own people's interests. That's a lie, Whit said. It does not need to be true, Taji said grimly, only believed.