I do not regret it. Neither do I. He pulled back just far enough to see her face clear in the growing light. Whatever Wolf Creek wants to call us now, traitor, fool, whatever name they've got waiting, I'll wear it long as I'm wearing it standing beside you. She held his gaze a long moment, something settling behind her eyes that looked, for the first time since he'd cut her down from that rope, like peace instead of survival.
I did not think I would find this again, she said quietly. Not after the rope, not after everything my own people decided about me before they ever asked me a single honest question. Find what? A reason to want tomorrow to arrive, she said, rather than only surviving until it does. He pulled her close again, forehead against forehead, the smoldering yard and the exhaustion in his own limbs fading somewhere distant for one more borrowed moment before the world came looking for them again, as it all way eventually did.
Then the sound of new hoofbeats reached them both at once, and whatever peace had just found them shattered clean in half. Not Voss this time, not Bragg's men, either. A different rhythm, entirely disciplined, unhurried, dozens of horses moving as one deliberate body across the plain, dust rising gold behind them in the strengthening dawn light like something ceremonial, something final. Yanaba's whole body went rigid beside him. Kosocha, she breathed.
Whit followed her gaze toward the ridge, and there they were, riders, 30 at least, dark shapes gathering into a slow, deliberate half circle around the smoldering yard. Morning light catching along spear points and rifle barrels, both. At their head, unmistakable even at this distance, an older man sat his horse with the kind of stillness that came only from decades of carrying weight far heavier than any single day's grief. Chief Kosoha had come and judging by the grim set of his jaw as he raised one hand to halt his riders at the yard's edge, he hadn't come to listen. He'd come to judge.
Among the riders flanking him, Wit caught sight of a face he recognized even at this distance. The same young warrior from the fight who'd shouted about traitors and blood, now sitting close to Kosoha's right hand. Close enough to whisper something into the chief's ear as the half-circle drew tight. Whatever he said made Kosoha's jaw tighten further. His eyes finding Yanaba across the smoking yard with an expression that carried grief and suspicion both, tangled together too tight to separate.
Because that was the cruelty of the lie Askala and Bragg had built between them. Wit understood now, watching it play out plain across an old man's face. It didn't need to be believed completely. It only needed to plant enough doubt that a father already grieving one loss couldn't trust his own eyes when they showed him a daughter of his people standing loyal, armed, fighting beside a white rancher against men who'd come to burn her alive. Loyalty and betrayal from this distance in this smoke-hazed light looked exactly the same.
Yanaba stepped forward, chin lifted. Every trace of the tenderness from moments ago folded back down beneath the same iron composure that had carried her through a noose, through fire, through everything Wolf Creek had thrown at her so far. "Then let him judge." she said, low, steady. Though Wit caught the small tremor beneath the words that only someone standing this close would ever have noticed. "We have survived worse mornings than this one." Wit fell in beside her, rifle lowered but not set aside.
The two of them standing together at the edge of the smoking yard, as 30 riders drew their circle tighter around a truth that was still, even now, only half proven. "Whatever happens next," he said quietly, "just for her, we face it the same way we faced everything since that rope." "Together," she finished. The word hung there between them, steady as a held breath, as Chief Kosoa nudged his horse forward those final few yards separating judgment from the two people standing ready at last to meet it. Chief Kosoa's horse stopped 10 paces from the smoldering porch. 10 paces, close enough to see the scorch marks, close enough to see the exhaustion carved into both their faces, far enough to still call this a judgment instead of a conversation.