The Totem-Maker (part twenty-two)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Three

I Am the Cause

(part twenty-two)

The horses stirred and snorted, not caring that their early visitor was strange…dawn, and any bustle of humanity, meant food to them. I found the creature Mumas had ridden, stroked its nose. It stood calm in its stall.

A groom entered, muttering, toting a pail of mash, and when his sight adjusted, he froze. He flung a warding hand. “Get out!”

I could see his master’s ways with him gainsay his first judgment. He peered towards the slot that gave air to the stall, through which the horse could find the water trough. He looked at me again, and his calculation seemed apparent enough.

“You don’t want me to go,” I said. “Or how will you prove I was here? And I advise you not to waste good water, for foolishness. I have not poisoned it. Take me to your master, and let him punish my trespass as he wills.”

The law of challenge required that I touch my adversary’s person. If I allowed myself delivered to Mumas, it would suit. He might kill another of Cime’s slaves. But Cime, of superior family, had the higher right of disposition. I judged Mumas wise enough to see himself as he was, slidden to the cliff’s edge, clinging to the leelaye’s slippery root. He had never wanted a feud with the House of Decima.

The groom found me too reasonable. “Did you get hold of something?”

He scanned rasps and picks, mallets, tackle, hanging from the walls. I spread my arms, smiling a little. My garments were thin summer ones. “No, I will never steal from Mumas. But I have something to say to him. Do you find me unworthy to speak to your master?”

“Me… I don’t care.”

“Better, if I make my way in from the yard? If I have done this myself, and no one to blame?”

He thrust hair from his forehead, in the way of reluctant agreement.

Discovering Mumas was as easy as pricking my ears. The slave attending his breakfast was underfoot, it sounded. Too sudden with the water pitcher, too slow stopping the clatter of its fall. I doubted Mumas had slept, and I doubted his agitation could calm itself.

How to enter…

If he only looked, he would see me watching at the threshold. The servant saw me, and in his brooding Mumas missed the twitch and quick effacement. So, I thought, do they hate him? Does this woman wish I would draw a knife?

Mumas heard my feet at last, strolling in; perhaps he smelled Lom’s blood staling on my tunic. He breakfasted without arming himself beforehand, sensibly enough, so could only leap from his bench, tamping away panic even as I studied his face.

23

I Am the Cause

The Totem-Maker (part twenty-three)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)