“Sisters!” Kiva shouted, then paused to look back and forth at the crowd that had gathered outside her hut. After she was sure that everyone was listening, she went on.
“I have spoken with the Strangers, and I have discovered why they journeyed across the stars to come to our planet. They are looking for a new home. Their planet is no longer a place that will sustain them. So they’ve sent their scouts ahead to see if Gle’ah would be a good place for their people to live.”
“But Gle’ah is our planet,” came a voice off to Kiva’s side. Kiva turned. It was Kyne.
“The Strangers can’t be allowed to live here,” Kyne continued. “They must be stopped. We must kill their scouts before they can call their people.”
Kiva clenched her teeth. Kyne certainly didn’t waste any time. Kiva had expected Kyne to challenge her, she just didn’t expect her to do it so soon. No matter. Now was as good a time as any to deal with her.
“You need to get out of the village more, Kyne,” Kiva said, forcing a confident, dismissive smile. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten how big Gle’ah is. There’s enough room on this planet for both of us—the Vagri and the Strangers.”
Kyne sneered. “Is that what they told you? You’re a fool if you believe that. The Strangers outnumber us. They’re more numerous than the blades of grass on the prairie, and when they come there will be enough of them to fill a thousand villages like ours, and a thousand thousand after that. They’ve ruined their planet. And they’ll ruin this one too.”
A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd. Kiva felt herself losing the Sisters to Kyne. Her arguments were difficult to respond to—especially since, as far as Kiva knew, everything Kyne said might be true. Even so, Kiva couldn’t let Kyne take control. She couldn’t let the Vagri kill Matthew.
Kiva put on the most contemptuous face she could muster and made sure the Sisters saw it, made sure they saw how little she thought of what Kyne was saying.
“You seem to know a lot about the Strangers,” Kiva said. “Where did you learn all this?”
“The Ancestors told me,” Kyne said.
Kiva shook her head. “Come on, Kyne, no one believes that lie anymore.”
“I have a way of communicating with the Ancestors,” Kyne insisted. “The Forsaken showed it to me.”
Kyne turned and spoke directly to the Sisters.
“They call it maiora. They found it in a place beyond the plain, where it grows so plentiful that there is enough for every woman here. When you eat it, it gives you the power to communicate directly with the Ancestors. With the maiora and the cooperation of the Forsaken, we no longer need the Vagra. Now we all can have her power.”
Kiva felt the Sisters’ temptation at what Kyne offered, felt them gravitate toward Kyne’s vision of the future.
“Sisters, the maiora is dangerous,” Kiva said, trying to keep her rising panic from coming through in her voice. “Kyne isn’t communicating with the Ancestors. She’s hallucinating. What she offers you isn’t power, but slavery. Slavery to the maiora and slavery to the Forsaken, who control it.”
“No,” Kyne said simply and softly—and the moment she heard this single, simple word, Kiva knew that she was in trouble. She knew that there’d be no recovering from what Kyne said next.
“Sisters, the Ancestors have shown me many things today through the maiora,” Kyne said, moving in front of Kiva and speaking directly to the crowd. “I know things that the Vagra has chosen to hide from you. I know, for instance, that she had the opportunity to let one of the Strangers die, but she saved him instead.”
There was a rumble of disapproval in the crowd.
“I know that she performed the healing ritual on one of them after my brother, Po, put an arrow in his chest.”
The rumble grew louder.
Kyne turned to look at Kiva. “And I know that she has mated with one of them. With the boy who came to her hut yesterday.”
Kiva held her breath. A shocked silence had fallen over the crowd. She closed her eyes and waited for the Sisters to erupt in cries of outrage.
But the cries never came.
What Kiva heard instead was the sound of a weapon firing, and agonized screaming coming from the edge of the village.