"I must, though," Tian said. He began to walk slowly back and forth in front of the benches. In his hands, the rusty-red plume of the opopanax feather swayed. Tian raised his voice slightly so they'd understand he was no longer speaking just to the big farmer.
"I must because sai Overholser is old enough to be my Da'. His children are grown, do ye kennit, and so far as I know there were only two to begin with, one girl and one boy." He paused, then shot the killer. "Born two years apart." Both singletons, in other words. Both safe from the Wolves, although he didn't need to say it right out loud. The crowd murmured.
Overholser flushed a bright and dangerous red. "That's a rotten goddamned thing to say! My get's got nothing to do with this whether single or double! Give me that feather, Jaffords. I got a few more things to say."
But the boots began to thump down on the boards, slowly at first, then picking up speed until they rattled like hail. Overholser looked around angrily, now so red he was nearly purple.
"I'd speak!" he shouted. "Would'ee not hear me, I beg?"
Cries of No, no and Not now and Jaffords has the feather and Sit and listen came in response. Tian had an idea sai Overholser was learning - and remarkably late in the game - that there was often a deep-running resentment of a village's richest and most successful. Those less fortunate or less canny (most of the time they amounted to the same) might tug their hats off when the rich folk passed in their buckas or lowcoaches, they might send a slaughtered pig or cow as a thank-you when the rich folk loaned their hired hands to help with a house or barn-raising, the well-to-do might be cheered at Year End Gathering for helping to buy the piano that now sat in the Pavilion's musica . Yet the men of the Calla tromped their shor'boots to drown Overholser out with a certain savage satisfaction.
Overholser, unused to being balked in such a way - flabbergasted, in fact - tried one more time. "I'd have the feather, do ye, I beg !"
"No," Tian said. "Later if it does ya, but not now."
There were actual cheers at this, mostly from the smallest of the smallhold farmers and some of their hands. The Manni did not join in. They were now drawn so tightly together that they looked like a dark blue inkstain in the middle of the hall. They were clearly bewildered by this turn. Vaughn Eisenhart and Diego Adams, meanwhile, moved to flank Overholser and speak low to him.
You've got a chance , Tian thought. Better make the most of it .
He raised the feather and they quieted.
"Everyone will have a chance to speak," he said. "As for me, I say this: we can't go on this way, simply bowing our heads and standing quiet when the Wolves come and take our children. They - "
"They always return them," a hand named Farren Posella said timidly.
"They return husks !" Tian cried, and there were a few cries of Hear him . Not enough, however, Tian judged. Not enough by far. Not yet.
He lowered his voice again. He did not want to harangue them. Overholser had tried that and gotten nowhere, a thousand acres or not.
"They return husks. And what of us? What is this doing to us? Some might say nothing, that the Wolves have always been a part of our life in Calla Bryn Sturgis, like the occasional cyclone or earthshake. Yet that is not true. They've been coming for six generations, at most. But the Calla's been here a thousand years and more."
The old Manni with the bony shoulders and baleful eyes half-rose. "He says true, folken . There were farmers here - and Manni-folk among em - when the darkness in Thunderclap hadn't yet come, let alone the Wolves."
They received this with looks of wonder. Their awe seemed to satisfy the old man, who nodded and sat back down.
"So in time's greater course, the Wolves are almost a new thing," Tian said. "Six times have they come over mayhap a hundred and twenty or a hundred and forty years. Who can say? For as ye ken, time has softened, somehow."
A low rumble. A few nods.
"In any case, once a generation," Tian went on. He was aware that a hostile contingent was coalescing around Overholser, Eisenhart, and Adams. Ben Slightman might or might not be with them - probably was. These men he would not move even if he were gifted with the tongue of an angel. Well, he could do without them, maybe. If he caught the rest. "Once a generation they come, and how many children do they take? Three dozen? Four?"
"Sai Overholser may not have babbies this time, but I do - not one set of twins but two. Heddon and Hedda, Lyman and Lia. I love all four, but in a month of days, two of them will be taken away. And when those two come back, they'll be roont. Whatever spark there is that makes a complete human being, it'll be out forever."
Hear him, hear him swept through the room like a sigh.