They welcomed her easily, and with an efficient manner born of practice. A mat was brought and placed on the chief’s seat. Here she settled, relieved to be out of the sway and lurch of the litter. The blood knives swarmed, always wanting to control her least action, but White Feather swept them out ruthlessly so that Feather Cloak could nurse the babies.
After this, the chief brought sharp beer and sweet cactus fruit, gruel, toasted grubs, and fowl dressed in wild herbs and sweetened with sap. She still could not get used to the sight of so much food. Yet when at last she addressed the chief to thank them for the food, they apologized for the impoverished feast, which they said was nothing compared to what was due to her eminence.
“Let me speak to your council to hear how life goes for you here,” she said.
The council was called hastily, elders, folk who had distinguished themselves, someone to represent each clan.
“We have no Rabbit Clan in our town,” said the chief. “Nor Lizard Clan.”
The blood knives stirred. “None out of the Rabbit Clan survived in exile,” they said. “No one kept their House, as is proper.”
Folk whispered, looking frightened. It was a dangerous thing to let the world slip out of balance.
“But there were so many before,” said the lady chief. “We were the few, who walked out into the barbarian lands. Those who remained behind to tend to the land were multitudes. Yet now we are the many, and you, those who came out of exile, are the few.”
White Feather seemed about to speak angry words, so Feather Cloak raised a hand, and all fell silent.
“The tale of our time in exile has already been told.” She looked directly at the blood knives. “Has an almanac yet been painted to record the tale of our struggle?”
“We have much ordering to do, to restore the Houses and the lines and the proper measure of tribute. We must recover and restore the ritual almanacs first.”
“I would not like to see the tale lost,” she said mildly, but as a warning. Let them chew on that! She gestured to the council, inviting them to speak. “Is this the town you came from originally?”
They told their stories. The husband chief had been born here, even if raised in the barbarian lands. He had come to this home, because it was the only one he knew. A scattering of people who had claims that allowed them to labor in the surrounding lands had brought in other unlanded folk. Mostly, people worked the fields, but despite this, the community was sparsely settled compared to the days before exile.
“Not enough men to clear the fields,” complained the lady chief. “We women are behind on our tribute offers of cloth. We can’t harvest the fiber quickly enough. The fields are still green. We have no thread for weaving.”
“What is your measure of tribute?” Feather Cloak asked them.
The list, reeled off from memory, seemed to her a staggering sum: feathers, paper, cloth in the form of short capes, incense from the smoke tree, and a range of agricultural goods for the temple and palace in the nearby city. But of course the birds were gone, the trees dead and any new growth yet seedlings, and the fields only newly sprouted with what little seed those who had survived the shadows had carried with them.
“The tribute lists must be redrawn,” said Feather Cloak, as she said every day. “Until the people are healthy and the granaries are full, until there is seed corn in plenty, we must put all our effort into restoring our fields and our population.”
“Tribute is necessary to maintain the universe,” said the blood knives, as they said every day. “To keep the balance, we must pray, we must bleed, we must keep our oaths, burn incense, and offer sacrifices.”
“So it must be done,” she agreed, “but not to the measure in the days before exile, or we will be drained dry again!”
“All your blood knives are dead,” they said, coming back to this point as they did every day. “It is no wonder the land was drained dry, that the balance was lost.”
“You know nothing!” cried White Feather.
“Silence!” said Feather Cloak, and they gave her silence.
The council was made uncomfortable by this dispute. They feared the blood knives. They prayed to the gods. They followed the example of the one who was elected from among the elite to become Feather Cloak, meant to be a mature woman, pious, virtuous, generous, of an invincible spirit as well as possessing the unquenchable power of life, granted to her by the gods.
“I will set a measure of tribute for this year, and the next. The year after, a census will be taken and a new measure allotted.”