strong nose and dark hair. ‘Why do you think I brought him? Because the Eel folk are at the centre of all this. If we don’t hear what they have to say we’re fools.’
Jurgi spoke up hastily. ‘She’s right. Let’s not bicker. We’ve got some hard thinking to do, some tough decisions to make. For a start I’ve been trying to make sure the Pretani in Etxelur don’t know that we know about their plan.’
Ice Dreamer asked, ‘And how are you doing that?’
‘Their big men are all in the dreamers’ house, working their way through my store of poppies.’
Dreamer laughed throatily.
Ana spoke, for the first time. ‘And what about this plan of theirs?’ She glanced at Jurgi, an unusual uncertainty showing on her small, solemn face. ‘Do we believe all we’ve been told?’
‘I think we must,’ Jurgi said. ‘There’s nothing for this man True to gain by lying. He deliberately sought out our trader to tell him about it. And the Eel folk here have admitted it.’ He glanced uneasily at Wise. ‘Though some of them had to be pressed.’
‘Maybe it’s all a bluff,’ Kirike said. ‘Maybe the Eel folk have been told to spin us this tale to frighten us.’
Jurgi hadn’t thought of that, and he considered. ‘I doubt it. We had no idea the Pretani were planning to fall on us at all. They wouldn’t give away the advantage of surprise just for the sake of stirring up a bit of confusion.’
‘Besides,’ Dreamer said, ‘as you should know, Kirike, you’ve got their blood in your veins, the Pretani aren’t the subtlest of folk. This scheme of planting warriors among us is pretty smart, but is probably the limit of their ingenuity. More likely, they just weren’t clever enough to imagine that one of their slaves would betray them.’
Ana said, ‘So the threat is real. The question is what we do about it.’
‘We fight,’ Novu said immediately. ‘We can’t let them take our wealth, our flint. And we can’t let them destroy what we’ve made of Etxelur.’
Jurgi glanced at Dolphin and Kirike, the young folk standing together, their hands gently touching. On impulse he asked, ‘Do you two want to fight?’
Kirike considered. ‘It depends what we’re fighting for. Once, if the sea flooded your house, you just moved away and built another one. That was how you did things in the days before the Great Sea - that’s what you tell me.’
‘You didn’t have slaves either,’ Dolphin said now, flaring. Jurgi knew she had been helping the slaves, for she had come to him for medicines. ‘You were a different people then, with different ways of thinking. Better ways, maybe. It’s all changed because of you, Novu.’
‘You weren’t even born in the times you speak of,’ Novu sneered. ‘You are an outsider. Like your mother.’
‘As are you—’
‘What would you have us do? Run like whipped dogs?’
Kirike took a step towards him, fists clenched. ‘You old people hate us, don’t you? I think you wish your precious Great Sea had just washed everybody away, so you would have been spared raising ungrateful runts like us—’
‘This isn’t helping,’ Ana said softly. ‘Kirike, you’re right. Once just walking way from problems was what people did. But we can’t do that any more, because the sea has eaten away so much of the land. The snailheads walked away, and ended up here. There’s nowhere left to go.’ She glared at Kirike and Novu. ‘But I won’t have division among us. Things are bad enough without that. Whatever we decide to do, we do it together.’
Novu turned on her, all but shouting. ‘ “Together.” Who are you to say “together”? You who have brought this horror down on us.’
Jurgi heard gasps. He was alarmed, fearing where this direct challenge to Ana might lead. ‘Novu, be careful what you say.’
‘What is there to be careful about? How much more peril could we be in? Think about it. Why is the Root so determined to bring us down, determined enough to plot and scheme over months, to whip up his entire people into a war party? Because before he was the Root he was called Shade. And for Shade it’s personal. It’s because of her - Ana - her and her sister, the disaster they caused that ended up with Shade’s brother and father both dead, at his own hands. Now he’s the Root, and when he looks over Northland, what does he see? Ana. Ana the survivor, the Giver, the big woman of Etxelur. This