The Tiger and the Wolf by [email protected] Page B

if the world knew that it could hurt you,
then hurt you it would.
Matched to the man who killed my mother . And it was obvious
that her father saw nothing objectionable in this thought at all.
All at once she had made up her mind and knew what she
must do.
‘What good are you?’
    The moon was overcast tonight, so the darkness of the pit
was near total. She stared challengingly at the pale smudge that
was the Snake priest, Hesprec Essen Skese.
    ‘Tell me,’ she hissed, feeling inexplicably furious at him, just
for his being there, as though he was to blame for her predicament. ‘What’s the use of you? What’s a Snake priest for?’
    ‘I know many things,’ he said carefully.
‘What things? Priest things? Magic?’
‘Ssome magic, yesh.’
‘You have friends here in the Crown of the World? Friends
    who will help you?’
He was silent. That meant no.
‘These things you know, they’re valuable? Or you can make
    people do what you want, or . . . ?’ Her words tailed away to
nothing. He was bound, haltered, kept in a pit. If his knowledge
gave him genuine power, would any of those things be true?
‘What good are you?’ she repeated.
    She heard him take a deep breath and then he spoke as
clearly as he could, fighting to speak around his raw gums. ‘The
wise of the north might value what I know, those who lust for
blood less than do the Wolf. The Horse people will honour me.
And I can live in many lands.’
‘You’re no hunter.’
    ‘You need no hunter to trap or to fish.’ His patient, quiet tone
was maddening.
‘You’ll die,’ she spat at him, striving to keep her voice low
despite her desperation. ‘If my father hadn’t taken you, you’d be
a frozen body out in the woods, or prey for our mute brothers.’
‘And yet I crossed half the world to get here.’
She thought hard. She felt as though there must be some
magic combination of words that would somehow cut the whole
knot of her problem open, and present her with a simple and
certain way out. Instead she had herself, and she had this
ragged, wretched creature.
She was leaving, she had decided. She was abandoning the
tribe. It wasn’t unknown. Broken Axe had done it, become a
lone Wolf and made his mark on the world. Much as she did not
want to think about him, perhaps in this he would be her inspiration.
Of course, Broken Axe – or the youth he had once been –
was not wanted by the chief for some mad plan to conquer the
Tiger.
‘What troublessh you, girl?’ asked Hesprec Essen Skese softly.
She glared at him. She would give him no blades to hold to
her throat, nor secrets to cut her with. She had crouched in her
alcove under the roof of the chief’s hall and counted over her
options, forced herself to examine precisely why she was going
to cut herself loose from her own people. The bitterness of it
was that she had finally been given something to stay for, after
all. She had passed the Testing. She had proved herself a Wolf. If
he had only left her alone after that, she would have been Akrit’s
most loyal supporter. She could have taught herself to love him,
despite all, even to love Kalameshli because he was the voice of
the Wolf, her Wolf. But that was not what Akrit had wanted from
her. He did not want her at all – not Maniye. He wanted a tame
Shadow Eater cub with the Tiger muzzled within her, so as to
twist her mother’s people into paying him tribute and strengthening his name. That was all she was: a thing to be used. And to
keep her on a leash, he would marry her to Broken Axe. That
ought to be the worst of it, but in truth it was that sense of being
used, as a thing is used: that cut deepest.
And even if the old Snake died in the cold, in the snow, in the
woods, still she would be striking one grand blow against her
father and against Kalameshli. Not only would she be taking
herself out of their grasp, she would be robbing the Wolf of his
sacrifice. The thought made her breathless with fear