Kavio

A strong arm clasped and dragged Kavio back to his feet. He could breathe again.

“The judgment was exile!” his helper shouted at the crowd. “You will not commit murder tonight!”

Blood dribbled into his eyes, so it took Kavio several blinks to realize who had saved him.

“Zumo,” he said hoarsely. His mouth tasted of blood and dust.

“I’ll escort you out of the tribehold, cousin,” Zumo said evenly. He snapped his fingers. Several other Tavaedis, all Zumo’s hangers-on, formed a defensive square around Kavio and Zumo.

The crowd jeered at Kavio as they passed, and a few of the braver ones hurled rocks or mud at him. He felt the shame of his nakedness strongly, not because of the attire itself, but because of the ashes smeared over his chest and thighs. He tried to hold his head up proudly rather than hunch over and shield himself from the taunting mob. He wondered which was worse, to need the protection of his enemy to walk the streets of the tribehold, or to wonder at its price.

“I thought you cast your stone on the black mat. Why are you suddenly so eager to keep me alive now when you wanted me dead this afternoon?”

“Ah, the stone. Mother suggested it would look more believable. But the fact is, I’ve got what I wanted,” Zumo said.

Kavio pressed his lips together.

“This doesn’t have to be forever, Kavio.”

“What?”

Zumo gestured to Kavio’s bloody, ash-smeared body. “This. Your exile.”

“That’s not the judgment I heard.”

“There is a way that an exile may be allowed to return—if he is pardoned by a War Chief or a Vaedi. Your father can never pardon you, because his impartiality would be called into question. But I could.”

“You?”

“After your father steps down, a new War Chief will have to be appointed,” Zumo went on. “It would have been you before. Now it will be me.”

Kavio felt sick. “Congratulations.”

They had arrived at the large wooden gates at the entrance of the tribehold. There were too many warriors on guard at the gate for the mob to follow. Muttering, the crowd dispersed.

“If you would agree to serve me loyally, I would let you back into the Labyrinth as a Zavaedi again,” Zumo said. He sounded as though he thought he was truly doing Kavio a favor. “I mean it.”

Kavio laughed. He looked his cousin up and down in contempt. “Never forget, I know what you really are, Zumo.”

Hatred boiled in Zumo’s face. And fear. “No one would believe you.”

“Don’t worry.” Kavio’s lips twitched in a self-mocking smile. “I know that. That’s not the point. The point is, I know what you are. And I would rather live in exile the rest of my days than serve a man who lives a lie every day of his life.”

“Be careful, Kavio. Death might still find you.”

“It finds us all in the end, doesn’t it? Goodbye Zumo.”

Outside the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold, no mobs harassed him and no enemies taunted him. Fields that smelled of sweet maize surrounded him. The tribehold stood on a mesa in a large box canyon cut by a river. Irrigation ditches and low stone walls divvied up the fields. The sparkle of willawisps blinked on and off against the night sky. He decided he would walk as far as he could by dawn before he stopped to consider camping. He had no sleeping roll, no pack, no water gourd, not even a weapon.

When the moon rose, he started to scan the valley for the journey omen. He admitted he was vain enough to hope for something noble, a nighthawk or a cougar, but no living creature crossed his path. All he found was the shed skin of a snow snake, luminous white, perfectly intact and as long as his arm. Snow snakes were rare creatures, which lived high in the mountains, but once a year they shed their white skins for jet black scales and descended by the hundreds to mate in the hot desert valleys. A poor omen, he decided. Even after he found the skin, he kept an eye out for a cougar.

He had walked most of the night when he heard footsteps paralleling his. He tensed.

Mother stepped out from the rows of maize. She seemed to glow white in the moonlight. He felt absurdly glad to see her, surprised yet not surprised to find her out here, just where the tilled fields gave way to wild forest. He quickened his step to join her, but when he saw her face, full of pain, he stopped short of embracing her.

She had not forgiven him. Aching inside, he mulled her painful words to him during their fight. You can’t even do this one thing for me.

He remembered reaching toddler-chubby arms up to her, commanding, “Fly with me!” She would sweep him up, as her wings spread behind her, until they rode the wind. Father hated those flights; Mother and Father always fought about it afterward. To stop the yelling, Kavio had learned to stop asking her to fly.

When he’d been seven years old, she’d sewn him his first dance costume, the most wonderous thing he’d ever seen, of spider silk and parrot feathers, cowrie shells and rainbow stitches. He’d ripped it up in front of her. She’d never sewn him another one.

Little by little, over the years, he had pushed her further from him. It was the price he’d paid to please his father.

He wanted to say: I’m sorry. To say: I love you.

He wanted to say: Fly with me.

Instead, his words tumbled out like stones on a slippery mountain trail, hard and impatient. “Just before the trial, you said you wanted me to look for the Vaedi, that humankind would perish if I didn’t. I can go now.”

Mother’s chalcedony bracelets chimed when she shrugged. “I don’t remember saying that.”

“This quest was supposedly so important you told me it was worth dishonoring myself to flee in secret rather than attend my trial. You don’t remember?”

“I thought they would execute you.” The scent of ripening corn wafted from the fields. Mother’s nose wrinkled slightly in distaste. She’d never liked corn, something she’d only eaten after she married Father. “I must have concocted wild things to save you.”

Why had he thought otherwise? She would never change.

“This is the last time I’ll see you, Mother.” He was proud of his straight back. He would not let himself scratch the dried mud that caked his body, though it itched like crawling flies.

She ruined the solemn moment by crying. He let her hug him and weep into his chest. He patted her shoulder. He realized he had been looking forward to her quest, to give him purpose in his exile. In his mind, he tore up the idea of finding the Vaedi, and all the other crazy things his mother had urged him, all lies, all spider-silk and parrot feathers.

As he walked away, the mud didn’t itch as badly. Her fierce hug had rubbed away most of the dust cake, leaving behind only a stain.