He didn't dismount because a man doesn't climb down from a horse before he's decided whether the ground below him still belongs to the person standing on it. "Yanaba." His voice carried the particular weight of a father who'd spent this whole ride rehearsing words he didn't want to say. "Word reached me that you fight now beside a white rancher against your own blood, that you have chosen a side already before this council ever called you to answer for it." "Word reached you," Yanaba said. Steady. The Wit felt the tension coiled tight beneath her stillness.
"Or word was delivered to you. There's a difference, Kosoa. One arrives on its own, the other gets carried by someone with a reason for the carrying." A murmur moved through the mounted riders. Kosoa's jaw tightened. "You accuse someone of lying to me." "I accuse someone of choosing which truths reach you," she said, "and which ones get buried before they ever have the chance." From somewhere among the riders, a familiar voice cut through the tension.
"She accuses me now. Is this not proof enough of what I already warned you, Father?" Askala rode forward, close enough Witt could finally see him plain, younger than he'd pictured, han- handsome in the careful, calculated way of a man who'd spent years learning exactly which expressions won him favor. His eyes found Yanabas with something that might have looked, to a stranger, like grief. Witt had spent enough years reading liars to know grief when it was real and know it when it wasn't. This wasn't.
Askala. Yanabas' voice went flat, cold, every syllable a blade. You ride here now, playing wounded pride in front of your father, when you know exactly what truth you're burying beneath it. I bury nothing. Askala's voice rose, practiced, pitched for the crowd behind him rather than for her alone.
I only mourn a woman who once meant something to our people, now fallen so far she fights beside Outsiders against her own blood. Convenient, Witt said, stepping forward at last, how a man so eager to talk about her fall never once mentions what actually killed your cousin that night. Askala's eyes cut to him, sharp, something flickering there fast enough most wouldn't have caught it. Witt caught it. Same as he'd caught Voss's tells 3 weeks back.
Same as he'd caught Bragg's careful stillness outside the mercantile. Guilt doesn't hide well, not even in men who've had years of practice hiding it. You know nothing of our ways, Rancher, Askala said, dismissive. And even less of this matter. I know a man's face when he's lying, Witt said.
Same in every language I've ever heard one told in. Kasoha raised a hand, silencing them both. His eyes settled on his daughter, no, Witt corrected himself, not his daughter, his warrior. The words tangling together in his head from 3 weeks of hearing Yanaba described both ways with a grief that looked, up close, older and heavier than the mourning alone could account for. "I do not wish this," Kosoha said, quiet now.
The words meant only for the small circle gathered close. Understand that, Yanaba. Whatever comes next, I have buried one child already this season. I did not ride here hoping to bury the woman who might as well have been a second." "Then don't," Yanaba said. And for the first time since the riders arrived, her voice cracked just slightly.