Cinn's Arc

Chapter 10 of 12

The braid held the elders out. Now their doubt pressed in. At the fire, they would not meet Cinn's eyes. One of them turned her shoulder when Cinn passed. Another whispered the same word Luminance had warned her of. Untrustworthy. A shaman who could not be read could not be trusted. Her seat, so hard won, was already sliding away. She needed proof that worked the old way, a reading they could watch with their own eyes. She left the fire before sunrise, Cyf beside her. "Where do we go," Cyf said. He paused inside the thought. "If a new method made them doubt you, you need an old one. One they already trust." "I know where it started," Cinn said. They went to the weathered market hall. Under a faded awning sat the old woman in her wheelchair, dressed in star-worked robes and heavy jewels. Silvana Starweaver had given Cinn the star-shaman book years ago. Cinn had never come back. Now she knelt at the wheel and said nothing, the way she had that first afternoon. Silvana looked at the braid on Cinn's wrist. "You built a wall." Her voice stayed flat. "Smart. Now they fear you." "Can you teach me a reading they can't argue with?" Silvana reached into a fold of her robe. She drew out a wooden tablet, carved with rows of old marks, strung with colored beads. "Mark-reading," she said. "Older than bones. The marks answer out loud. Anyone can check the work." She set it in Cinn's hands. "The shaman must respect this. It hides nothing." Cinn turned the tablet over. The marks shifted as she read them, like the book had taught her tongue to do. "The wall stays in your head," Silvana said. "The reading stays on the wood. They see both are true." She did not explain more. She watched Cinn the way she had waited years to watch. Cinn returned to the fire at dusk. The elders stood when she entered, ready to strip her seat. She did not speak her defense. She knelt and laid the carved tablet flat where all could see. She read it aloud, mark by mark, and let them follow each line with their own eyes. She called the hidden count of those gathered. She named a loss one elder carried and had told no one. The marks said it plainly on the wood. The eldest shaman bent close, checked the carvings, found no trick. He straightened. "The reading stands," he said. "The seat stands." The whispers died. Cinn kept her seat. Then Luminance drifted close, its stars quiet. "They trust the wood," it said. "Not you. The next thing they ask for, you will not have a tablet to answer it." Its light dimmed. "And an elder just learned you can read the thing he hid. He will not forget that you found it."