Ratre and the other warrior were fast asleep on their moss beds, and Kaz froze, then crept forward as quietly as he could. The healer watched this with irritation tinged by amusement, but didn’t attempt to convince Kaz to leave.
Settling down next to Ratre, Kaz watched the slow rise and fall of the other kobold’s chest, counting silently. When he was sure Ratre was breathing normally, he nodded and rose. He would have liked to check the male’s heart rate as well, but didn’t want to risk waking him.
He looked at the male with the infected scratches on his leg, and tried to count his breaths as well. It was difficult, since his breathing was still fast and shallow, and the number he reached concerned him. Looking up, he saw that Jul was watching him in turn, and the healer motioned impatiently for Kaz to come closer.
Kaz obeyed, sitting across from the healer, then leaning down so he could listen to the breathing of the sleeping male. On his shoulder, Li shifted as her perch did, but she didn’t complain audibly. Kaz pushed extra ki into his ears, and found that he could hear not only the sound of air moving in the kobold’s chest, but also the rapid flutter of his heartbeat. To his relief, the breaths were fast but clear, though he thought the heart didn’t sound quite right.
“He’ll recover, I think,” Jul murmured, “but he needs complete rest for several days. The poison almost reached the artery in his leg, and he hasn’t been eating enough, so his body will struggle to heal, even now that it has help.”
Kaz nodded, straightening. He was nearly certain that all of the males who came from the mosui city were miners. He’d only spent a brief amount of time there, but it was a harsh place, and from the little he’d heard about the other mines, or other sections of the same mine, they hadn’t been much better. None of the miners had had enough food, except those who used their strength to steal from the others.
“We can’t stay that long,” he admitted reluctantly. “What will happen to him if we have to leave him here?”
Jul hesitated, then shrugged. “He’ll become part of the Goldcoats, or if he’s not strong enough, we may give him to one of the lesser tribes. We serve the Goldblades directly, but there are others who choose to bind themselves more loosely.”
Kaz gritted his teeth. “He wants to find his old tribe.”
The healer sighed. “Then it will depend on what our chief, Tezne, says, and what tribe he came from.”
“His name is Minc, of the Darkbow tribe,” Ratre’s raspy voice said. Kaz and Jul turned, to see the gray-furred male struggling up to lean on one elbow as he continued speaking. “They serve the Wavefangs, who serve the Waveblades. They used to have a den on this level, and the one below, but Minc was captured almost a year ago, so that may have changed.”
Jul’s tense expression eased. “I know them. They’re further from the stairs, but the Waveblades and the Goldblades have a mutual passage pact. The Darkbows have been helpful in clearing the fulan, as well as killing the monsters that sneak in through the crevices above. It’s best to catch the things before they grow, so all the tribes on this level have warriors scouring the halls and tunnels to find them as soon as they appear. We’ve all lost warriors, so gaining a new one would be good, but I think Tezne will be inclined to give him back, if they want him.”
Ratre’s eyes closed, and for a moment Kaz thought he had fallen asleep in his awkward position, but then they opened again, and he nodded to Jul gratefully. “We have another from one of tribes claimed by the Waveblades, two from a Mithrilblade tribe, and two who used to serve the Magmablades. Those lost their whole tribes to the fulan and the mosui, but they have cousins in a Mithrilblade tribe, and hope they’ll be accepted there.”
Jul shrugged, but his hand reached out to adjust a bit of the moss beneath Minc’s unconscious body. “The chiefs will decide, but since the Magmablades lost their place, there has been a great deal of adjustment. It has started to settle these last few years, but if they left the Deep more than a few years ago, they may find that their tribes are very different.”
Kaz cleared his throat softly. “My tribe is in the heights,” he said, “and I don’t understand how the Deep works. My den mother said there were great tribes and lesser, but she never named them. I know the Deep is safer than the mid-levels and the top of the mountain, but…” He trailed off, letting the two older males fill in the empty space. He didn’t want to lie more than he needed to, and so far, he was mostly just going around the truth.
Jul and Ratre exchanged glances, and then Ratre rolled onto his back, closing his eyes. Clearly, he couldn’t or didn’t want to answer this question, but the rhythm of his breathing didn’t change, so Kaz thought he wasn’t actually trying to sleep.
After a moment, Jul shook his head. “Your den mother did you a disservice, not teaching you the proper howls, but I suppose she thought it unlikely you’d ever see the Deep. Normally, I’d tell you to go back to her and ask her for the old howls, but that’s not an option, is it?”
Kaz met the sharp brown eyes and felt his ears fold back. “She joined the ancestors just before I left,” he admitted, and his eyes grew hot and prickled at the words. Too much had happened when the humans appeared, and he hadn’t been able to take in his aunt’s death. Dozens of his tribe members had died since they left the Deep, many of them in front of his eyes, but Rega was special, and he hadn’t even been able to howl her to the ancestors.
Jul shifted a little closer to the table, hands moving among the small bags and jars there, but when he looked up again, his gaze was noticeably gentler. He set out five polished bone containers in a row, turning them so Kaz could see the runes carved into them. Each rune was a different color, and Jul tapped each one as he spoke.
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“Goldblade.” A rich, metallic gold paint was thickly layered into this rune. “Woodblade.” A deep blue rune. “Waveblade, Mithrilblade, and Magmablade.” These were black, white, and red in turn.
“Long ago, the mountain gifted the first female of each tribe with certain powers. Their daughters carry these powers forward, and the ancients left devices that only females with these powers can use.
“The Goldblades are the only kobolds who can mine the mid-levels and the Deep metals. Their females can shift immovable stone, and our most ancient howls say they could once pass through that stone, finding hidden veins of mithril and adamantium.
“The Waveblades control the water, drawing it up from the rivers that run beneath the Deep. Without them, we would only have what trickles down from above, and we would use that up within a hundred years. Waveblades can create a water source in any den, so tribes can settle wherever they wish, without having to hunt for a pool or spring, and move when that runs dry.
“Mithrilblades are the greatest smiths among us. They use forges heated by molten stone, and are the only kobolds who can craft using mithril and adamantium. All the weapons used by the great tribes are created by them, and each one will last for centuries unless they’re raised in battle against another just as strong.
“Magmablades command the fires of the earth. They work with the Mithrilblades to run the ancient forges. They could heat a den without fire, or take control of an existing flame, turning it against those who started it. If they were still as strong as they once were, they could wipe out the fulan on this level in hours, and destroy the monsters born within it in seconds. Now, it’s all they can do to make the forges hotter or colder as the Mithrilblades require, and the only reason they still exist at all is because the mountain created them.”
Firmly, Jul tucked the container with the red rune behind the one bearing the white rune, then picked up the blue. Ears drooping sadly, he lifted and turned it, hiding the rune. “The Woodblades cared for the Tree, and controlled the yumi fields and gathering caverns. At their command, reeds grew overnight, and mosses covered the walls. No one went hungry, and if anyone needed a gift for a new mate, or a painting of their pups, one of the Woodblade artists could craft it for them. When I was young, I trained with the Woodblade healer, and he’s the reason I’m the best healer among the Goldblade tribes.”
Kaz and Li watched as Jul shifted the containers around again, placing the blue-marked one out of sight with clear reluctance. The healer shoved the bone jar with the red rune roughly to the side, then set an apparently random array of pouches around the remaining three jars.
“Each of the great tribes has a number of lesser tribes who owe allegiance to them. The Waveblades have the most, and are currently the strongest tribe as a result. When a female of a greater tribe is adopted into one of these lesser tribes, the tribe is allowed to use the greater tribe’s title as part of their tribe name.
“Our tribe, for instance, had a chief three generations ago who was a weaker Goldblade female. She would have been one among many there, so she chose to take the Stonecoat chief’s son as mate, and the Stonecoats became the Goldcoats.”
With a distinctly amused twinkle in his eye, he sat the gold-runed jar atop a particularly plump pouch, where it balanced precariously. More pouches were added to the collection, each one shoring up the pot at the top, until it stood firm and proud in its place.
“Each of the lesser tribes works for the greater ones, as needed, and according to their own strengths. As a subsidiary of the Goldblades, we sometimes help mine, but more often we guard their miners when they travel into the Deep or the mid-levels. We keep the areas with the richest ore veins clear of lopo and other beasts, as well.”
Kaz frowned, tilting his head. “But what do you get out of it?”
Jul chuffed a laugh. “We don’t have to fight for everything,” he said, simply. “The Goldblades have pacts with the other great tribes, and in turn, we work together with the other lesser tribes, to the benefit of us all. If a neighboring tribe wants to declare luegat, they have to get approval from the tribe they owe allegiance to, and the greater tribes rarely grant such requests. No one but the Magmablades themselves have declared vara in generations, and they were nearly destroyed for it.
“It’s more difficult to find food than it used to be, but the Waveblades and the Goldblades work together to run the yumi fields and gathering caves, so while they yield less than they did, there’s still enough for everyone to have a share. The Waveblades make sure no one runs out of water, so we don’t have to find new territories every few years. Males are almost never traded without their consent, and our lives aren’t wasted in pointless battles.”
To Kaz, it still sounded too good to be true. There was something Jul either wasn’t saying or didn’t know. Oda had been too bitter, her relationship with Kaz, Katri, Rega, and the rest of the tribe too twisted. He didn’t think she was only angry because her plan to take over the Deep had failed. There had been something more than frustrated ambition behind it all. The way she talked about art, and history, that had been personal, and smelled of betrayal, not just abstract animosity.
“Then why did the Magmablades wipe out the Woodblades?” he asked, unable to hold back the question, now that he had gone this far. “Why not just do what they were planning to do to the other four tribes, and sneak into their territory so they could declare vara? Wouldn’t it have been better to take them over, keep the young females and raise them as Magmablades, rather than losing whatever power allowed the Woodblades to grow enough food for everyone? Especially if the Woodblades weren’t even good fighters. Surely Oda didn’t fear them striking back at her. If she was going to wipe out a tribe, it sounds like it should have been the Goldblades, since she’d need the Waveblades to raise the water, and the Mithrilblades were already the Magmablades’ allies.”
Kaz knew Oda better than anyone who hadn’t lived with her every day of their lives. She was arrogant, ambitious, and easily offended, but she wasn’t stupid. She carefully selected the tribes she called luegat on, studying them and preparing a battle plan based on what she learned. If she wasn’t so obsessed with trying to return to the Deep, and hadn’t refused to allow the females in the tribe to take mates and bear pups, he thought her plans would have succeeded at least half the time. Her impatience and eternally bad luck had been her downfall.
But Jul shook his head. “I don’t know, pup. I’ve heard a hundred theories, but only the Magmablades know the truth, and they don’t speak to anyone outside their own tribe anymore.”
“I can tell you,” Ratre growled, and Kaz, Li, and Jul spun to face him. Kaz had completely forgotten about the other pair of ears listening to the conversation, but now he remembered that the other kobold had said his tribe was supposed to be guarding the Woodblades the night the tribe was wiped out. If anyone except the Magmablades had known what caused Oda to single them out, it would be the Woodblades themselves, or, apparently, at least one of the tribes they controlled.