Amazon Chief (59 page)

Lia was smiling, as was pretty much everyone else.

"She took my knife and sword from me, then they lowered me down, and while still wrapped in the net, they trussed me up then threw me over the front of Maya's horse for the ride back to Queen's Town. It was not a comfortable ride."

"And then what happened?" Aura asked.

"They dumped me at the Queen's Feet and demanded justice. But there wasn't any evidence. I had one rabbit hanging from my horse's saddle, but they couldn't have proven it was from one of their snares. I could have claimed being out for a walk."

"Yes?" Aura said. "You came back with that decoration, so I know Queen Malora judged you guilty and passed sentence. How did that happen?"

"I confessed."

"It wasn't that simple though, was it?"

"You can't possibly know whether it was that simple or not."

She smiled. "Are you sure?"

I sighed. "I was still trussed and wrapped in that net. Maya asked for a moment alone with the prisoner. Then she told me what punishment she was going to demand if I was judged guilty and asked if I was absolutely sure she didn't have more evidence. Malora wouldn't have done it for a few rabbits, but it had all been in fun, anyway. They'd gone to a lot of work to catch me, so I let them have the rest of their fun."

"What was she going to demand for punishment?" Lia asked.

"The punishment I received after confessing was also dictated by my sister," I said. "I was made to confess how many rabbits I had illicitly acquired, and then she demanded I return that many skins times three. Plus I was given a temporary decoration on my face."

"Not dyed hair?"
Lia asked.

"No."

"What was the decoration?" Aura asked.

"You're not too old to spank," I told her. She only laughed. "They had a skin dye. They
dyed the words 'Rabbit Thief' across my cheeks. You could still see it a week and a half later."

The girls found that especially funny.

"Maya threatened to have it tattooed if I didn't confess."

"Oh," said Lia. "She wouldn't really have."

"I'm pretty sure she didn't have any evidence."

"She did," Aura said. "That was the second day they got out of training early. The day before, they all watched you. There were seven eyewitnesses, Chief Beria."

I laughed. "I thought she was bluffing. Aura, did she tell you what she really would have done to me if I hadn't confessed?"

"Maya knew you'd confess if Q
ueen Malora asked for the truth, so they never settled on a real punishment. Some of the ideas were pretty outrageous."

"When they were done and untied me, Malora asked me why I'd done it. She pointed out I'd get caught eventually. I told her I had been counting on it, but thought the companions would complain to Maya, and Maya would come see me about it. I would make her stay a day or two then offer restitution."

"Really?" Aura said. "Maya didn't tell me that part."

I shrugged. "Queen Malora ordered me to stay the night, and then she and Maya came home with me the next day and stayed a week and a half. So I got what I wanted. I got to spend time with my sister."

"Awww," said Lia. "That's sweet."

"I spent weeks snaring rabbits to pay my debt." I paused. "It probably wouldn't have taken that long if Maya hadn't been checking my snares for me." I turned to look directly at Aura. "I wondered how she knew how to find my snares. I don't mark them in a fashion she should have recognized. No one at Queen's Town should know, but somehow she did."

"Oh shit," said Aura.

Everyone turned to her.

"I've been waiting for nine months to see who knew a little too much about that story," I said.

"Oh shit," Aura said again. She began to look wildly around the dining room, but I knew she wasn't going to go anywhere.

"It didn't take long to figure out someone told her where my snares were and how to find them."

"Chief Beria..."

"The real question is this: did someone inform the companions of Queen's Town that someone was stealing their rabbits? They caught me at least a week faster than I thought they would. I was meticulous in leaving no tracks, and so the only reason they would wonder what was going on was the reduced productivity of their snares. I didn't take all their rabbits, after all, just the ones I could reach quickly. Normally, when a snare stops producing, you move it, but they caught me before they'd moved more than one, and that one was probably due to be moved, anyway."

Aura clamped her lips together, which I thought was probably wise, at least for the moment.

"The question you should be asking yourself, Aura, is whether I confronted the Queen's Companion. You should perhaps ask yourself did I catch her in the woods with a brace of rabbits, my rabbits, and then tell her I'd seen her steal eight of my rabbits. You should ask yourself what deal she may have struck to avoid justice from the chief of Lake Juna for poaching rabbits in our territory. You want to wonder whether I would have asked for a full confession, including the names of any co-conspirators."

"Oh shit," Aura said, then clamped her mouth shut again.

"Now, maybe I confronted the Queen's Companion; maybe I didn't. Maybe she named co-conspirators. Maybe she didn't. Care to gamble, Aura?"

"I told her," Aura said.

"Told her what?"

"How to find your snares. But she blackmailed me!"

"She did, did she? And what information did she have that was sufficient to blackmail you?"

Aura looked at her hands. "That I was the one who told them you were stealing the rabbits."

"I find it unlikely that Maya would blackmail you, Aura. That's not her style."

She sighed. "It might not have been blackmail. She only said I was already in it up to my neck. She said if you were going to engage in pranks, and I was going to interfere, then I shouldn't hold back."

"Why did you tell them?"

"It slipped out," Aura said. "I didn't mean to tell. I'd gone home to visit."

Both Aura and I would probably always consider Queen's Town as "home". When I dreamed about being home, it was almost always Queen's Town, and occasionally Gallen's Cove. I never dreamed about Lake Juna.

"Keep going," I said.

"I let it slip I had a secret. It wasn't intentional; it just sort of slipped. No one said anything, and I forgot all about it. It was hours later, and we all went wrestling. Bea challenged me."

"Which isn't surprising." Bea loved to wrestle.

"And Maya suggested wagers. She said anyone who won a match could ask the loser any question she wanted, and the loser had to answer. Everyone had to wrestle everyone else once, and we'd do the questions at the end. I won most of my matches, but I lost to Bea, Omie and Vorine."

"That's predictable."

"They all gave Maya their questions for me."

"Ah ha. And you didn't claim privilege when she started asking?"

"I did."

I was actually a little surprised Maya would press for someone else's secrets.

"But you caved under my sister's intense questioning?"

"No," she said. "I caved under Queen Malora's orders."

"It does not sound like my sister to force you to give up someone else's secrets. Didn't you claim it was confidential?"

"The first question your sister asked me was whose secret was I holding."

I laughed. Of course she would want to know after that.

"That sounded harmless enough. I told her the truth. I tried to clam up after that, but they marched me to Queen Malora. Malora listened, then sent them all away and asked me gently if this were a secret you wouldn't want Maya to know. And I knew you were hoping she'd catch you, so I had to say 'no'. So she called Maya back and made me answer the other two questions. Then she ordered me not to tell you."

I waited, considering. "Thank you for finally sharing the truth, Aura," I said. "I believe the weather has grown nice enough we can have a bonfire tonight. I will pass sentence at that time."

"Yes, Chief Beria."

After that, the companions retrieved our dinners. I was going to get my own, but Lia told me to sit, and then she came back with two plates and sat next to me. She waited a few minutes then whispered to me, "What are you going to do to her?"

"A lot less than I had thought I would," I said. "I thought someone had intentionally betrayed my game. I can't fault her for answering when Queen Malora ordered her to."

"What would you have done?"

"Something amusing to all of us and deeply embarrassing to her.
Plus let her know privately I was deeply disappointed and ask her if she wanted to move back to Queen's Town."

"That doesn't seem so bad."

"She would have been mortified. Village chiefs don't recommend their warriors go somewhere else unless they have lost faith in them."

"She tattled on you for a prank, a prank in which you intended to get caught."

"I thought her loyalties were divided. She should have loyalties to her friends at Queen's Town. I certainly do. But her first loyalty needs to be to the village where she lives. Even if it were only a prank she was exposing. It's a good thing she told me that Malora asked if I wouldn't want Maya to know. Both of them would have let her talk her way out of telling if not for that question, so if they made her tell anyway, it was because she didn't try very hard."

"Did you really confront your sister?"

"No. I decided it was more fun to solve it this way. I had almost forgotten about it. Aura must have decided she was safe after all this time to have brought it up and pushed me so hard for all the details."

Lia shook her head. "All of you are so bored you are constantly pulling pranks?"

"It seems like that, I suppose. We work hard, and what we do is stressful. It's important to let off steam, so we find harmless ways to do so. I don't engage in pranks with anyone living here, so my friends at Queen's Town are my only targets."

"Why don't you play with the people here?"

"Because it wouldn't be fair. If I catch them, I'm obligated to punish them, and I do, although they don't play pranks on me very often. But the only way they can get back if I do something to them is to pull a prank on me. And then when I catch them, I punish them. That's a bad cycle. I actually miss the teasing and bantering. You saw how Maya and I are when we're together. And Nori, too. When I was younger, I never would have teased her, but now we're on a more equal footing. She was so intimidating when I met her, but I have nothing but respect for her, and I love her to pieces."

"You miss that."

"Yeah. I visit as often as I can, but it's not the same as living there. I didn't want this job here. I would have stayed in Queen's Town my entire life if I could. But Malora asked me to take it, and I'd do anything she asked. Anything Nori or Maya asked, too. At least it's not as far as it could be, and I find some excuse or another to stop down often."

Lia smiled, but her eyes were shifting around when she did it.

"What would you do if one of my girls did something naughty?"

"It depends on how naughty and whether there was a habit. You and I would discuss it privately. That answer will change when they turn twelve. Twelve is the youngest we take girls as companions, and at that point, I will treat them like any other companion living here."

"So for now, you would leave me to handle it?"

"If it were an isolated incident, yes. If it becomes more often than isolated, or if it were something particularly dangerous, I'm not sure I'd leave it to you. If I felt you were condoning whatever they were doing, you might share their punishment."

She shook her head. "This concept of adults being punished puzzles me."

"We live too closely together to allow for discord
, and we need to be able to trust each other. Young companions get into a lot of trouble, which tapers off when they realize the consequences can be significant. I haven't had any real discipline problems, so the most egregious I've had to deal with were a few companions slacking off on their duties. And, of course, pranks, but those are rare. I don't get involved if it's pranks between each other unless it starts to sow discord. I've stepped in a few times when a prank between warriors resulted in more work for the companions."

"What did you do?"

"Made the warriors involved take all the companions' duties for two weeks."

"Fitting. Chief Beria, I believe I need to know a little more about the rules of the village."

"I'm sure you know them."

"Well, I think I need to know what happens if you find yourself, oh, I don't know, perhaps discovering evidence of a prank. Perhaps you think you have a pretty good idea who did it, but you aren't sure."

I laughed. "Am I likely to find myself in that situation?"

"I couldn't say," she replied.

"Okay, so hypothetically speaking," I said. "Perhaps there is a surprise waiting in my bed tonight."