Reclamation

Your first wife has done nothing wrong, he said silently. Your second…Eric looked toward Branch in the River. Defiance still smoldered in her eyes. She had made her bid for what she knew as power and had lost, but she was in no way defeated. Eric found himself doubting very much that she would stay with the clan for long.

He lifted his hands over her husband's head and raised his voice to the sky.

"I stand in the place of the Nameless Powers and I see with the eyes of their Servant Garismit. If any think shamefully of Nail in the Beam dena First Hand to the Work, the shame is theirs, not his. The Servant sees and the Nameless know him to be faithful and stern in his keeping of the Words."

Eric took Nail's right hand in his and reached out with his power gift. Nail grunted as the gift added a new scar to Nail's hand marks, a small straight line indicating that forgiveness had been sought and received. Most people carried eight or ten of them. Nail, Eric noted, did not have any others but his.

"Go now, Nail in the Beam. I think Iron Shaper will need help organizing your exodus."

Nail stood up heavily and bowed deeply, retreating backward as the Words dictated. Branch in the River picked herself up off the ground and followed him without looking back. Eric watched them until they both vanished through the stands of Crookers and bamboo.

"Thank you for that"

Eric's head jerked around. Aria stood in the shadow of a stunted evergreen.

Eric ran his hand through his hair. It was tangled and damp and he thought longingly of the cleaner in the U-Kenai. "What else was I going to do?"

Aria shrugged and moved into the light. "You could have told him the Words were all about as meaningful as a cloud of splinter-chasers and that the Teachers were totally powerless to intercede for anybody."

"I thought you told me to look for the truth under the Words."

"I did." She smiled softly. "But I wasn't sure you were listening."

Eric felt himself smile in response. "It is next to impossible not to listen to you, Aria." He nodded in the direction of the huts. The noise of voices and bustle drifted to them on the wind. "What's happening over there?"

"Everybody is getting ready to pull out at sunshowing. Reed in the Wind is going to head for Narroways to find our work-walkers and tell them what's happened. Mother is going to stay here with Storm Water for two weeks in case anybody comes back before then." She bit her lip for a minute, concern plain on her face. Eric could picture the scene that must have happened when that idea was proposed. "Jay and I will head straight for his dome to see what's there," she went on with forced calm, "and you and Teacher Heart…" Aria broke off and looked at him sharply. "Eric, what happened between you two?"

Eric knotted his fingers in his hair. I don't have to tell her. She has no right to ask. What could it possibly matter? I'm back. I'm doing everything I can. What business is it of hers?

"What you heard was true," he heard himself say. "I did once have an affair with Lady Fire in the Dark. She was a friend of my sister and married to a half-dead cousin of ours. She was so beautiful…I loved her, I really did. She…we…she became pregnant and I was the father of the child. You know the law. No child of an adulterous union carries a name from the Nameless. It has to die. I was a Teacher. I had to…I had to…" He couldn't finish. She looked at him with mute sympathy and he remembered she had borne seven children but only had four that lived. He wondered briefly if some Teacher had declared one or more to be tainted, but he didn't ask. "She cursed me. Threw me out of the house for obeying the Law and the Words. I was in shock. I went home. I thought, some rest, some contemplation, and I'd be all right.

"I stayed in First City for two months. The longest I'd been home in years. My sister, Mind, had a new husband." He waved his hand toward the houses. "And I started noticing things about him. How he watched me. Some things he said. Curious papers he'd hide when I came around. He…it didn't take me long to work it out. He was a Heretic. He was listening to a group of people who were suggesting that the Words didn't come from the Nameless and the Servant, that the apocrypha had been taken out by the Teachers, not the Nameless…" He caught her glance and saw her wry humor creeping into her expression. "All right, all right. I was young. I was a Teacher!" He raised both palms toward the sky. "I believed. Nameless Powers preserve me, I believed. All of it. Including that Heretics had to die. I couldn't…not so soon after Lady Fire…"