A Tkiurathi woman called from below. She raised her blade, and he tossed her down the whetstone, which she plucked from the air with a grin of thanks before wandering back towards the centre of the village.
Tsata slipped his gutting-hook back on to the catch at his belt and relaxed, watching the activity around him. It was exciting to be here in Saramyr again, and the better because this time he was not alone, but surrounded by his people. They took the strangeness of the land in their stride. They were brothers and sisters, insulated within their pash, comforted by the knowledge of community. Tsata found himself smiling.
At the base of the trees, traditional three-sided yurts called repka had been built. They were communal places for living and sleeping, with splayed, tunnel-like arms around a large hub construction with a chimney-hole through which curls of smoke rose. Other fires had been made outside: the hunters had already caught some of the local wildlife, and Tsata had been busy indicating foods that were safe to eat. He was recognised as the authority on Saramyr within the pash, having been here before and having studied its language and its customs long before that.
It was the way among the Tkiurathi that they were all teachers, each one sharing what unique knowledge or abilities they had. It had been one such man who had taught Tsata Saramyrrhic, a man who had travelled and lived here for decades before returning to his homeland. Tsata had a particular gift for languages – he had already learned a good deal of Quraal, which was the lingua franca of the trading settlements dotted around the Okhamban coast – and he had been bewildered and fascinated by stories of Saramyr. He applied himself to learning Saramyrrhic with a singularity of purpose that impressed his teacher, and within a few years he was as skilled at it as any foreigner could be. The months he had spent here had improved his command of the language vastly, but even now he was not entirely fluent in the overwhelming multitude of modes and inflections, the tiny subtleties of High Saramyrrhic that only those born to it could hope to master.
When he looked away from the settlement and back to the trail, Kaiku was there. She was regarding him impishly, a wry expression on her face.
'Are you coming down here, or shall I come up there?' she called.
He laughed; he knew her well enough to tell that she was not bluffing. With monkey-like grace, he slipped off the branch and swung from it to the ground ten feet below. There was a moment of awkward hesitation as they met, as each tried to determine whether to greet the other in their native fashion or that of the foreigner; then Kaiku stood on tiptoes, kissed him on the forehead and embraced him. Tsata was warmly surprised: it was an unusual gesture of extraordinary intimacy for a Saramyr to bestow.
'Welcome back,' she said.
'It is good to be here,' he said. 'I wish all welcomes had been as pleasant.'
'The feya-kori,' Kaiku murmured, nodding slightly. 'I fear you could have timed your arrival a little better.'
'Perhaps we have arrived at just the right moment,' he countered. 'From what I have learned, there have been no darker days than these. And there is no further need to convince my people of the threat to us; the men who return to Okhamba will spread the word. Seventy-five of us lost their lives the day we landed, but the remainder will fight harder for their sacrifice.' His face cleared suddenly. 'But we can talk of such things later. Let me show you our new home. And you must tell me what has occurred in my absence.'
It was as if they had never been apart. They fell easily into the rhythms of conversation that they had established during their long period of isolation, when they had lived and hunted together in the shattered wilderness of the Xarana Fault.
He talked of the many obstacles he had faced in his mission to alert his people to the danger of the Weavers. Kaiku spoke of her induction into the Red Order and her training. She told him also of Lucia and Mishani; he had met them briefly before his departure from the Fold, but he knew them primarily through Kaiku's stories. And she spoke of her fears for Lucia, and about the Weave-whales, and the plight of the beleaguered forces of the Empire.
They wandered the village as they talked. Kaiku had chosen travel clothes over the attire of the Order for her visit to the Tkiurathi village, for she did not wish to appear intimidating. Now she was glad that she had. Amid the informality of the Tkiurathi, she would have felt self-conscious in her make-up.
The people were muscled and lean, their skin tough and their hands seamed through the rigours of their lifestyle. She often found herself identifying them as much from the unique pattern of their tattoos as by their features, for it was difficult to see past them at first: they were such an overwhelmingly prominent facet of their appearance. The women were strong and physically unfeminine by Saramyr standards, having little softness about them, though Kaiku found in some a kind of wild beauty that was appealing. They sat as equals with the men, their long hair bound with cord or left loose, wearing sleeveless garments of hemp or hide and trousers of the same.
Tsata sat with her around one of the campfires that had been built out in the open, along with a dozen other Tkiurathi who were eating. The men to either side of them handed them bowls and tipped a portion of their own bowls into those of the newcomers. It was a typically Okhamban gesture of sharing. Kaiku did not know how she was supposed to respond, for she had nothing to give back; but Tsata motioned to her not to worry, no response was needed, and he began to fill the remainder of both their bowls from a pot of stew that hung over the fire. It was the meat of some local animal mixed in with vegetables and unfamiliar spices: it smelt delicious, though not so delicate as Saramyr food, more laden with heavy flavour. By the time he had finished, they had been handed chunks of bread from others in the circle, torn from their own loaves. Kaiku could not help but thank them, even though she knew almost nothing of their language.
'You do not need to thank them,' Tsata told her. 'You do so by allowing them to share in your food, when you have some and they are hungry.'
'I know,' she said. 'But it is difficult to break the habits of a lifetime. Just as I would find it odd if some of your people turned up at the door of my house expecting to be fed.'
'It does not quite work that way,' he laughed. 'But I can tell there will be many such misunderstandings between your folk and mine in the days to come.'
One of the women, who had been studying Kaiku, said something to her in their rough, guttural dialect. She looked uncertainly at Tsata.
'She says your language is very beautiful,' he translated. 'Like birds singing.'
'Should I thank her for that?'
He smiled. 'Yes. Ghohkri.'
Kaiku repeated the word to the woman, by chance pronouncing it perfectly to murmurs of approval from round the fire. Encouraged by her response, others started to ask her questions or make observations, which Tsata translated rapidly back and forth. Presently Kaiku was drawn into the conversation around the circle, with Tsata murmuring condensed explanations in her ear as people spoke to each other in Okhamban. She began to interject with a few comments of her own, to which there was always a slightly uncomfortable moment of incomprehension until Tsata could provide the Okhamban; but they were polite and patient, and Kaiku began to enjoy herself greatly. They were clearly fascinated by her, and they thought that even the shabby travel clothes she wore were incredibly exotic.