Free Ammonite by Nicola Griffith Page B

I’m new to their ways, and yours.” Cassil smiled as if to say that was not news. Marghe chose her words carefully. “Someday, they—we—may be your neighbors. We could be useful to you.”
    “There’s no burnstone in this valley, but perhaps your friends will find some other way to hurt a land they don’t understand. How will that be useful to us?”
    “We’ve learned a lesson, and how to listen.”
    Cassil appraised her. “Perhaps that’s so.”
    Marghe opened a pocket and slid out a thin strip of copper. She put it next to Cassil’s bowl. Cassil picked it up, rubbed it, weighed it in her hand, but Marghe could not tell what she was thinking. She opened another pocket and took out a similar strip of iron. Cassil compared the two, then put them back on the table. She looked down at them a long time, then nodded abruptly. “Talking is thirsty work.”
    She drained her bowl, refilled it.
    They ate breakfast, and they talked, and ate lunch. It was late afternoon by the time they agreed: three months’ travel food, a pair of fur leggings, and a small sack of dap in exchange for one kilo of copper, two of iron, and guaranteed special consideration—if not quite friendship—from all Company personnel presently at Port Central. Trata. She would need to bargain for furs and a horse from the women of Singing Pastures, if they were amenable to trade.
    “The trata must be witnessed by a viajera.” A journeywoman teller of news, Marghe translated, though obviously with some ritual function. “We expect T’orre Na soon.” Cassil’s face rounded with pleasure, and perhaps a little worry, “She comes to lead the pattern singing for Rhedan’s deepsearch. I’m Rhedan’s choose-mother.”
    Marghe mentally compared this with Eagan’s notes: the ritual name-choosing by pubescent girls, and the concept of different mother roles within a kith. But what was pattern singing, and why did it give Cassil cause for concern? “Congratulations,” she said cautiously. Perhaps she could observe the ceremony. But her time was limited, and there would be equally interesting ceremonies on Tehuantepec. “How soon do you expect the journeywoman?”
    Cassil shrugged. “Not before the women of Singing Pastures drive their herds down. She’s a few days down the windpath, with Jink and Oriyest’s flock, and that one of your kith, Day.”

    Marghe did not know what she meant. “Who?”
    “Your kith who is called Day, the one adopted by Jink and Oriyest. The one Jink saved when the burn went.” She looked at Marghe curiously. “You don’t know the story? It’s a good one. T’orre Na could sing it for you.”
    A woman called Day, her kith. A Company woman… It made sense now. This was why Lu Wai and Letitia had not wanted her to meet Jink and Oriyest. Day would be there. Day, a Mirror who had gone AWOL. One of the many missing, presumed dead. How many of the others were alive?
    She would have to talk to Lu Wai about this. Later.
    “I can’t wait for T’orre Na. Perhaps one of my adopted kith can witness for me.”
    It would take several days to get the relay up and working. Lu Wai could be her proxy.

    It was another two hundred miles north to Singing Pastures. While Letitia and Ude worked on the relay, Marghe rode north with Lu Wai on the sled. She watched the Mirror’s gloved hands gentle on the stick, her indecipherable face beneath the quilted cap, and wondered what would drive a Mirror to go native.
    To go native . She rolled the phrase around her mouth. It tasted of scorn. And fear. Why did the idea make her so afraid? And how many, how many Mirrors and technicians were out there, living in these strange cultures? They could tell her so much.
    “How many people know about Day?” she demanded when they stopped to eat and relieve themselves.
    “Officer Day is listed as missing, presumed dead,” Lu Wai said calmly, and carried on peeling a goura. She cut the fruit and held out half. Juice ran over her wrist. “Want