"I'm not sure it does to me, either," Rod confessed. "But I think it works this way: if the Wolmen are getting twelve percent—twelve BTUs for every hundred—and are only paying ten percent for the money they've borrowed, they make two percent profit by keeping the money in the bank, instead of using it to pay off their loan."
Gwen stared.
Then she took a deep breath, and said, "Yet the bank thereby doth lose this two percent thou speakest of! Wherefore doth it pay more than it doth receive?"
"I can't make sense of that one, either," Rod confessed. "The only thing I can think of is that Shacklar must run the bank, and that he's willing to take the loss to make the Wolmen dependent on him. After all, if a man has all your money locked up, you're… not… too… apt to make war on him!" He stared, his eyes huge. "My lord! Of course! He's buying them off!"
"Yet, then, if they send to learn of their money's interest, doth it not mean…" Gwen's eyes rounded, too. "Nay, certes! They did seek to recover their money, that they might be free to make war!"
"Without taking a loss on it," Rod said grimly. "Which is plenty of reason for Shacklar to send a courier out in the middle of the night. Just what was the message he carried?"
"That the interest rate was but now increased by five parts in a hundred."
"A five percent hike, on the spur of the moment?" Rod goggled, and Yorick whistled. "This Chartreuse chief knows how to bargain! Nothing like the threat of war to motivate the General into giving them a little extra profit."
"Very sharp," Rod agreed. "What did the Chartreuse tribe send back—a polite 'Yes,' or a withdrawal slip?"
"Sergeant Thaler did bear back word lauding General Shacklar for his honesty, and naught more."
"Which means they left their money on deposit." Rod drew a deep breath. "Y'know, Shacklar's not too bad a horse trader himself. What's five percent against forestalling a war? He may just have had the right idea, trying to bring the Wolmen into the modern world." But he wasn't sure that applied to Gwen.
"Here, then!" Cholly's voice called down the stairwell. "Have a care, mister and missus! Here's one who wants't' talk't' yer!"
Rod looked up, adrenaline thrilling through him.
Chornoi came down the steps, face a bright pink.
Gwen smiled. "Thou dost seem newly scrubbed."
"Of course," Chornoi snapped. "Wouldn't you be?"
"Aw! I thought you looked good in that color," Yorick protested.
Rod relaxed, feeling the adrenaline ebb. "Yeah, it was the real you."
"Oh, stuff it!" she blazed.
Rod stared, taken aback for a moment. "What's the matter? Didn't you like being a Wolman?"
"What do you think?" she snorted. "It's not easy, being Orange."
Yorick pushed a crate over with his foot. "Sit. Tell us what's happening under the big open skies."
"Do not heed their impudence," Gwen advised. "Truly, within, they rejoice to see thee home and hale."
"They sure hide it well," Chornoi growled.
"Thanks." Rod nodded. "Now, tell us what happened out there."
Chornoi snorted, and dropped down on the crate. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
They stared at her for a moment.
Then Rod sighed and leaned back. "We couldn't really expect anything more, anyway. But somebody must have come to the Sun-Greeting Place."
"Oh, he did—and it was Hwun, all right."
"But he smelled a rat?" Then Rod struck the heel of his hand against his forehead. "Of course—what's the matter with me? He knows every member of his tribe by sight! Why didn't I…"
"Don't worry, I did." Chornoi's mouth turned down at the corners. "He's a Purple chief, so I was wearing Orange paint. And I staged it welclass="underline" When he came up in the false dawn there, with the sky just beginning to glow in the east, he found me on my knees, weeping." Her eyes lost focus; she gave a slow, critical nod. "Yeah, I did it well… He just stood there for a few minutes. I pretended I didn't notice. Then he reached down and grabbed my shoulder." She winced. "He grabs hard! Talk about a grip of steel…"
"I trust he did not hurt thee!" Gwen frowned, concerned.
Chornoi shook her head. "I don't think he meant to, and I suppose he was sympathetic, by his lights. He said, 'Woman. Why you weep?'"
"Wait a minute." Yorick held up a finger. "Didn't he want to know your name?"
Chornoi shook her head. "No need. I was from another tribe—that was all he needed to know. And that I wasn't trespassing—because I was on sacred ground, which is open to all. So I told him that I was weeping for the man who was killed yesterday morning. And Hwun said, 'But him not of your tribe.'"
"Oh, did he!" Rod lifted his head slowly. "That means the corpse must've still had his body-paint on when Hwun found him."
"Which means Hwun washed it off." Yorick frowned.
"Yeah, to hide the victim's identity." Rod scowled. "Why would he want to do that?"
But Chornoi was shaking her bowed head, waving her hands in front of her, palms out. "No! Hold it! Stop! You're both missing the main point!"
"Which is?" Rod asked.
"That Hwun wants to get all the tribes together, and the dead Wolman could be a very powerful common focus. But it'll work much better for that, if nobody can tell which tribe he came from."
They sat still for a moment. Then Rod nodded slowly. "Yeah… that could be…"
"More than 'could,'" Chornoi snorted.
"Then he did tell thee thou wert not of the slain man's tribe?" Gwen said.
Chornoi nodded. "So why was I weeping? Well, I had to think fast, I tell you! But I did, and I told him I was weeping for all Wolmen, that I would weep for any, who died at the hands of the Colonists!" She frowned. "I was waiting for him to tell me to stand up, but he never did."
"And for him to warm toward a weeping woman?" Rod said softly.
Chornoi glared at him. "I told you, I don't fit their standards of beauty!"
Rod didn't believe it. "Even so—you were female, and grieving. And you're young enough. You were waiting for something resembling a chivalrous response, weren't you?"
Chornoi held the glare a moment longer. Then her mouth twisted, and she admitted, "Yes, I was. But there wasn't any—not the ghost of a one."
Yorick grinned. "Well, you knew the Wolmen were a bunch of male chauvinists."
"Sure," Rod cut in. "Any primitive culture's going to be patriarchal."
"Not 'any.'" Yorick held up a palm. "But these guys are. Comes from imitating commercial fiction, no doubt." He turned back to Chornoi. "So you stood up anyway, huh?"
She shrugged, irritated. "I was getting a crick in my neck."
"So you stood up," Rod inferred. "Slowly, sinuously, with a few discreet wriggles."
Fury flared in Chornoi's eyes, but she didn't answer.
"It didn't work?" Rod said gently.
The fury faded a bit. Reluctantly, Chornoi inclined her head. "All he did was start reasoning. He pointed out that I shouldn't take it so hard. As a bona fide female, I had more to gain from the colonists than to lose."
Rod scowled. "Was he being sarcastic or something?"
Chornoi shook her head. "No… From his tone, he was just stating the facts of the case. As though it was a logical point, you know?"
"These subsistence cultures end up preoccupied with common sense," Yorick said. "So how did you answer that one? After all, there is a surplus of Wolman women, with the resulting polygamy." He frowned. "Odd, though—you wouldn't expect a leader to be quite so carefree about one of his people's women going to the men of his enemies."
"Well, that's just where I hit it. I put on the big indignant scene—that no true Wolwoman would want a man all to herself, if that man wouldn't be a Wolman, just a colonist. But Hwun just went on telling me, in that emotionless style of his, that it would make much more sense for me to have one man all to myself, if I could.