She stops short when she sees me standing at the base of the path. For a moment, I think I see suspicion on her face. “I saw your kayak coming across the bay. I didn’t know to expect you,” she says. “Is everything all right at your camp?”
“You didn’t come last night,” I say. “You said you would come to the feast that Chev was giving for me, but you didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” Some of the tension drains from Lo’s shoulders, and the line that formed between her eyes when she first saw me softens. “I couldn’t leave.”
And then I remember. Before she says another word, I remember the excuse she had given for returning to her own camp yesterday.
“I had to help my father,” she says. She smiles an easy smile, and my stomach twists. “He’s been working on a kayak, and I wanted to help.”
Shava’s words ring in my ears. Lo’s father is dead. Shava said these very words. But not just Shava. Her mother told the story of the hunting trip that claimed his life.
“Your father?”
Something in Lo’s eyes dims, but she nods.
“The clan’s High Elder?”
“Yes. Yes, my father needed my help.” Something creeps into her voice—a tight, clipped note of impatience. “Why?”
I glance around at the ring of huts—sparsely covered in skins, support poles leaning—but that doesn’t necessarily prove that the clan is struggling. Lo’s clan is nomadic; this camp was constructed quickly and was not intended to last.
“What are you looking for?” The tone of Lo’s voice tightens further, until the words all but strangle in her throat. She raises a hand as if to shade her eyes from the sun, but where she stands she is sheltered by my shadow.
“Is there someplace we could go to talk?”
“Of course.”
Lo leads me to a hut with gaps between the covering hides that let in light and wind. “I’m glad you came to see me,” Lo says, once the door has draped closed behind her. “I was hoping to have the chance to spend more time with you.”
“So you could tell me more lies?”
She takes a step back, but if she finds my accusation surprising, her face doesn’t let it show. “What lies have I ever told you?”
“You told me that you were helping your father yesterday. But that’s not possible. Your father is dead.”
Maybe I expected her to argue, but I’m thrown off when she smiles. “I never lied. I said I was helping my father. That’s true. I’m helping him by leading this clan. I’m helping him by building a kayak. I’m helping him. That’s all true. I never said that he was living and breathing beside me while I did it.” Lo slinks past me in the tight space, dropping down onto the pile of pelts near the center of the room. “Come sit by me.”
“I’m fine here,” I say, though the suggestion sends a wave of heat over my skin. Lo stretches back against the warm brown of a bear hide, and I can’t help but consider sitting down, stretching out beside her, taking the time to hear her words, letting her explain everything that’s been going on.
When she smiles, as she does now, there is a warm invitation in her eyes.
How could this be manipulation, when her eyes glow with the openness of the wide sky that stretches above the meadow on a summer day? It can’t hurt just to sit for a moment, to speak to her. To ask a few questions and discover the truth.
I seat myself on the floor beside Lo’s left hip. “My brother and Shava have become betrothed,” I say. “She and her mother will be rejoining our clan.”
Something flashes across Lo’s face—a subtle flinch.
“Because of this, she felt that she could open up to us. She shared some information with us—”
“What kind of information?”
Sitting close to Lo, I see wariness rise in her. The openness in her eyes abruptly clamps shut. “Can you guess what she said—”
“Kol, stop playing with me—”
“She said that you intend to kill Chev.”
Lo shakes her head and starts to laugh. Not a hard laugh, but a controlled, deliberate laugh that has a statement wrapped inside it. “If I killed Chev, Mya would simply take his place. If I killed both Chev and Mya, it would be Seeri, and after her, Lees. I would have to kill them all to reunite my clan—”
“Are you saying it’s not true?”
This time it’s Lo who stands. She steps to the door and holds it open for a moment, looking out as if watching for someone to appear or something to happen. Then she drops the door closed and the room dims again. She stands in the doorway, light bleeding around the hide behind her, turning her into a silhouette, her features hidden in shadow. She moves back to the spot where I am seated and I scramble to my feet.
“Do you not yet realize?” Lo says. Her voice is rich and dark, like the shadow that hides her face. “There is no Olen clan; there is only Bosha. The Olen are a false clan, led by a false leader. Chev refused to submit to my father when the Divine chose him to lead, yet despite this selfishness, they have thrived while we have suffered. Until today.