Tarashana by Rachel Neumeier (little red riding hood ebook TXT) 📕

Garoyo inclined his head, acknowledging this command. Then he looked at the boy. “Ensu, get up and come with me.”

Ensu got to his feet, hesitated, then went to Garoyo. My brother dropped a hand to the boy’s shoulder, a light touch. Ensu flinched, steadied himself with an obvious effort, threw one wide-eyed glance over his shoulder toward Tano, and let himself be guided from the tent.

Tano bowed, touching his face to the rugs that covered the floor of the tent.

“Well?” my father demanded.

“Lord,” Tano said, not moving. “Thank you, lord. Perhaps my brother may be worthless now, but he will try hard to please Garoyo once he sees it is possible to earn his approval. I am very, very grateful for your extraordinary generosity to my brother.”

My father’s eyebrows rose. “Do you consider my generosity extraordinary?”

“Yes, lord,” Tano answered, still with his face to the rugs. “I am very certain your generosity is indeed extraordinary. I do not think anything could make me less certain.”

“So,” said my father. “You may sit.”

Tano straightened, though he stayed on his knees and kept his head bowed.

“Your shameful behavior today brought disgrace to me and to the inGara,” my father told him. “Explain to me how and why this happened.”

Tano took a breath. Then he said, still not looking up, “We came out of the high pass and saw the Convocation had come here. I realized the inTasiyo had probably come here as well. I thought immediately of the ban between inTasiyo and inGara. I saw how easily the inTasiyo could be destroyed. I thought ...” he stopped.

My father did not say anything. Neither did I. For a long moment, there was silence.

Finally Tano said, his voice low, but steady. “I thought this would be very easy to do, but it would have to be done at once, before any inTasiyo learned I was no longer one of their people. I would only have to provoke my fath—the warleader of the inTasiyo. He would have no right to raise his hand to me, but he would not know that. He would break the ban.” Tano stopped.

“Not if you did not explain you had become inGara.”

“I intended to say that I told him and he disregarded this warning. He would deny the charge, but if my words were clever enough, no one would believe him. I thought I could do it. I thought I could make the inTasiyo believe what I said. They know their warleader will lie. They say he is clever and they scorn other tribes that do not have a warleader as clever. I thought I could use that. Other people would see what they thought. Even if he were not perfectly certain, our king might say the ban had been broken. If he did not, the inTasiyo would still lose standing among the tribes. That was not what I wanted, but it would be a beginning—” Tano cut that off. This time my father only waited.

Finally Tano looked up. He looked at my father, not at me. He said, “When I saw Ryo, I realized I could not do it. I knew he would despise me. I tried to do it a different way instead, by speaking only the truth.” He took a breath and went on. “But that does not matter. Everyone knows I meant to lie. Everyone knows if I had not intended that, I would have told my father—I am sorry, lord, I mean the inTasiyo warleader.” He paused again to steady himself. Then he said, “Everyone knows that if I had not intended to lie, I would have told him that I am inGara now. Everyone knows I told him true things in a way that would make him believe things that were not true. They may consider Yaro inTasiyo acted more shamefully than I did, but everyone understands that my actions were also shameful. This is the manner in which I disgraced the inGara.”

“No,” said my father. “My son, correct the error this young man has made.”

I said, “Tano, the disgrace comes from what you intended to do, not from what anyone else knows or does not know. That you changed your mind and spoke the truth to Koro was not as bad. But that you had to change your mind in order to speak the truth is disgraceful. This would be so even if no one in all the winter country knew your intention. Even worse, you put the lord of the inGara in a position where he was wrong to bring charges against the warleader of the inTasiyo. Even after he declared the ban held, if the inTasiyo had not lost so much standing, Koro might well have set a judgment against the inGara for bringing a false charge against the inTasiyo. He would not have been wrong to do so.”

“Oh,” Tano said, almost voicelessly. He bowed low. “I apologize for my stupidity, lord.”

My father said, “I accept your apology. You may sit.” He waited for Tano to straighten again. Then he went on. “Before you were inGara, you learned to think of tactics that are not honorable. Thinking of those tactics is not wrong. Putting them to use is wrong. I am pleased that the inTasiyo have been ruined. But I would not have sacrificed the honor of even the least of my warriors to make that happen.”

“Yes,” Tano said, his voice very low. “Whatever punishment you give me, I will not protest it. If you—if you say I am not inGara any longer, I will not protest your decision, lord, but ... I hope you will not say that. Please, lord.”

My father turned to me. “My son, what punishment is appropriate for this young man’s disgraceful actions?”

I answered, “When Koro asked him to tell the truth, he obeyed. That is very important. His mistakes were serious, but