Feivel stood firm, eyes locked onto those of the chief as he approached out of the plains, even as the Those That Stayed gabbled between themselves and Janice lost herself in the earth that he loved and she hated so much. The chief was trailed by his shamans, his featherkeepers, his healers, his wise councils. The defenders moved to stand behind him, too, but still Feivel stood strong, proud, as necessity dictated.

"What is this that dares upon us?" the chief snarled.

Feivel didn't answer. He knew how this was supposed to go. He'd seen it several times in his own tribe.

"It appears a loyal seed, cast to the wind, returning with all the malice that is the world bearing down upon the true people of the feather."

The women mewled and whinged and Feivel drew himself up taller, stronger. He kept his mouth sealed, his tongue tied. One did not speak to the chief until the chief asked one's name directly. Only then would the traditions dictate speech on an equal level.

"What use has a seed with the Those That Stayed, that this scourge, this plague upon our beasts, must traverse our sacred grounds? The Ancestors will not be pleased. See how they rumble through the sky, creak through the wind, shout through the very earth. Listen how they wave the grasses, furrow the soil, gather the clouds. See and listen how they advise my actions, listen and see how they guide my hand, for I am their true chief of these true people of the feather. No other but the tribes belong here, and you have brought the scourge upon us. What is your name, that we might curse it to eternity for your trechery?"

Feivel couldn't fight down the smirk that touched his lips. He'd lost the name the tribes gave him when he took the blood red feathers from his rings and replaced them with the harmless pinions of a jaybird. But he had a third name, both he and Gershwin did, given them when they saw and listened the Ancestors and their words and actions.

It was this name, most secret, most guarded, most treasured that he snarled, all gutteral, rolling consonants, to spare him his life. As he did, he heard his Ancestor creep across his face, and the chief and his entourage quaked, shook, shrank for a moment.

Feivel felt his teeth sink into his lip beneath them, and Janice's sobs were lost in the rush of wind through the grass that he saw cresting within his ears.

Tem felt it, suddenly. What exactly it was, he couldn't begin to express. But he definitely felt it, and he turned towards Gershwin out of instinct. It was a pulsing sensation, compelling action, a voice lost and muffled by sepulchral and subterranean qualities. Tem shuddered because of it, and it was answered immediately by the shrill cry of the tribesman's whistle.

As soon as it was there, it was gone again, and even as the whistle's shout died out across the fields, the thunder of hooves kicked up, then receded, departing quickly up the path of the mountain, scree clattering wildly, madly, behind the departing hooves.

"I want that horse," Lenarvix snarled beside him.

"The last one was such a good horse," Kodavix agreed sadly.

"Shh," Murar chided them both. "It's not our meal yet."

Tem turned towards the camp. "Gleb?" he asked, hoping the assassin, the murderer, the butcher had not gone away as well.

"Gone he bein'," Gleb answered quietly. "Best we'd be waitin' his returnaback."

Tem sighed and nodded. "I suppose," he agreed.

"Rest to yer bone-weary legs, Tem Raithcliff," Gleb insisted. "Tell some tales to us with eager ears."

The girls were trying their hardest to separate Janice from the earth beneath her as she sobbed and keened and snarled and lost herself utterly into its contact. But even as they did, none of them missed the word that snarled its way out of Feivel's lips. Even as he said it, Marley felt herself go cold to the core, and then the very sounds of which it was made were gone completely from her mind.

The lot of them stared up at him from where they crouched, trying to help Janice. Kendra was casting about for something they could use to get her up off the earth, but everything here was so saturated in dust, in grit, that it was unlikely they would find anything. She alone continued to work as the tribesmen collectively took on a look of shock.

Then, the chief, or who they all guessed must be the chief, strode forward, touched Feivel's ears, toyed with the feathers around his neck, spoke quietly, leaning in, pressing against the horseman, fingers twining around the cords that held his feathers and his whistle to his chest. Fingers curled into his hair, and Marley and the girls found themselves staring at the impropriety of the show, the chief continuing to whisper what sounded like sweet nothings but could just as easily have been death threats for all the sense they made.

But Feivel was completely stoic, hardly moving as these ministrations were made to him, uttering firm, one-worded answers, and forget it if she was expected to really understand just what this was going on.

From where she lay on the earth, forgotten for a time, Janice began to speak in their tongue, even as her face contorted in fear and rage and pain. When the chief finally stopped and looked at her, Feivel continued to pay no mind. Instead, the chief approached, carefully followed by his entourage.

He reached out to touch her, and recoiled with a spitting snarling vicious sound from her lips. One of the old women came scuttling to his side and spoke a few hurried words. The chief nodded, called to the rest of the village, and they took Janice away between them on a reed litter.

The lead defender spat on the ground as she passed, and Kendra glanced around at the lot of them before clinging onto Feivel's back. What they said to one another, Marley couldn't begin to guess, locked out as she was between their whispered words.

This did not bode any better for them as far as she was concerned.