People of the Morning Star (37 page)

“Yes, Clan Keeper.” The man dropped to one knee, first lowering his forehead to the ground, then following it up with a touch of fingers to the smudge the muddy mat left above his eyes. With that he was on his feet, pounding away.

Not for a hand’s time had Blue Heron had so much as a moment to herself. Now she sighed, massaged her face with tired fingers, and turned her attention to one of the attacker’s arrows they’d collected.

“No markings.” Seven Skull Shield forestalled her remark. “I’ve looked them over to exhaustion. They are too perfect. The shafts are absolutely identical; the stone war points are as similar as twins and chipped out of bluff-milky chert. It’s that stuff that comes from the gully quarries in the bluffs a hard day’s run to the south. Even the turkey-feather fletching is cut just so. My guess, Keeper, is that they’re from one of the arrow maker’s workshops in River Mound City.”

She arched her eyebrows, sighed, and nodded. “Could you find the maker?”

“I can.” He gave her a humorless grin. “But as good as the attackers have been up until now, I suspect they weren’t clumsy enough to introduce themselves and ask, ‘Will these arrows be right for shooting down the lady Night Shadow Star’s people?’”

Blue Heron gave him a shadowy smile. “No, I suppose not. But wait a moment.” She turned, calling back through the doorway, “Smooth Pebble? Is breakfast ready? If so have Notched Cane bring a plate to Seven Skull Shield.”

“Coming, my lady.”

Blue Heron rolled her neck as if it were cramped, her face drawn into a grimace. She added, “You might as well go on a full stomach. Save you stealing breakfast from some poor innocent soul who’s struggling to get by.”

Seven Skull Shield spread his hands defenselessly. “Keeper, I swear, I never steal from the innocent.” He accented the gesture with a wolfish grin. “It’s the arrogant, crafty, and rudely overbearing ones I can’t pass by.”

She actually laughed at that as yet another runner came pounding his way down the sloppy avenue from the Four Winds Clan House. The young man leaped his way up the stairs, bowed deeply before the guardian posts, and dropped to his knees just beyond the veranda.

“Come,” Blue Heron called, nodding acknowledgment as the youth touched his forehead. “What news?”

“
Tonka’tzi
Matron Wind wishes to inform you that by the time the sun is two hands high we should have three squadrons called up for the search for Lady Night Shadow Star.” He withdrew a folded section of hide from his breechcloth, handing it to Blue Heron. “Those are the respective areas Matron Wind has detailed each squadron to search.”

Smooth Pebble stepped out the door, a fine brownware bowl steaming in her cloth-wrapped hands. She lifted a questioning eyebrow, unmistakable disapproval in her dark eyes, as she told Seven Skull Shield, “It’s hot. Don’t burn yourself.”

Seven Skull Shield nodded, carefully easing the bowl from the
berdache
’s hands, smelling turkey, persimmons, and walnut, all thickened with ground lotus root.

“Thank you, Smooth Pebble.” He jerked his head toward the Keeper. “She hasn’t had so much as a morsel. And if you’ll recall, she’d barely sat down to her supper when the summons from the Morning Star came last night. Even as good as this smells, she’s not going to take the time to eat a stew. But if you poked a hole into one of those fingers of bread from last night and stuffed it with mashed up turkey, it would be just practical enough that she could take bites and chew as they talked.”

Smooth Pebble’s brow arched higher, as if he’d taken too free a liberty. Then the growing irritation eased as she shot a measuring look at where Blue Heron bent over the deerhide map with the runner. “Actually, thief, that’s a pretty sharp observation. I’ve spent half my life trying to get her to eat.”

“And you could pour some of the stew into her tea cup. The one with the handle. It’s got to be cool enough that she can chug it. If it were me, I’d walk up during a break, hand it to her, and say, ‘Drink that so I can clean the cup.’ As soon as she takes it, cross your arms and glare at her in that ‘I’m in a hurry’ fashion of yours.”

“Why would I risk angering her that way?”

“Because she’ll drink it down. All these years and you haven’t noticed?”

The
berdache
now was studying him thoughtfully, lips slightly pursed. “You think that would work? First Woman knows I’ve tried to my wits’ end to keep her fed when she’s in a hurry.” She poked a hard finger at him. “But if she lashes out at me for doing it, I’ll make you wish you were hanging in a square!”

“She won’t. Just don’t be too obvious about it.” He lifted the bowl, blowing to cool it. Carefully he slurped at the hot liquid. Too hot. Having nothing else to do, he added, “She’d take a chunk out of you if she thought you were doing it for her. But just the hint that she’s keeping you from attending to your duties? She simply can’t abide the notion that she’s inconveniencing you.”

Smooth Pebble’s frown etched her forehead as she watched the Keeper. “How do you know so much about her, thief? You’ve only been here a couple of days.”

“People are my business,
berdache.
If I don’t judge them right the first time, my life gets short and very uncomfortable.” He gestured. “She’s got a right to worry this morning. Whoever this assassin is, he’s cussed clever.”

The
berdache
nodded, crossing her arms. “I’ve never seen her this way. She’s scared, thief. Right down to the root of her souls.”

“If my neck had come that close to being cut, I’d be shivering, and like
Hunga Ahuito,
trying to grow eyes in all four sides of my head.”

“And never closing them, even for a moment’s sleep.”

He sipped at the soup. “She and Night Shadow Star seem close.”

“The daughter she never had. She told me about what happened to those dirt farmers up on the bluff. She hasn’t said it, but she’s terrified the assassins have taken Night Shadow Star. That they’ll try the same ritual, but this time with a Four Winds Clan woman.”

He rocked his jaw as he considered it. “Maybe. Me, I’m missing something here. These attacks, they’re not just political.”

“Meaning?”

“Assassination might be a fundamental part of the plan, but whoever’s behind this has thought it through … obsessed on the details for years. Using Pond Water to control Cut String. The brown-chert knives, the manner of the
tonka’tzi
’s execution and the attempt on the Keeper, the ritual sacrifices up on the bluff, all this is a carefully planned performance. No local chief or House leader that I know of is behind it, either. This is someone … some
thing
different.”

“Different how?”

“Dark and malicious. And not just witchery. If I had to use a term, I’d call it brilliant evil.”

“You’re scaring me, thief.”

He nodded absently as he lifted the bowl and blew. “We’d all be a heap better off staying scared, too.”

Another runner came pelting across the wet grass of the plaza, his bare feet slapping. In flying leaps he took the stairs, barely hesitated at the guardian posts, and slipped and slid to a precarious stop. He slapped at his forehead to gesture his respect as he shouted, “She’s alive! Lady Night Shadow Star and the Red Wing are on the way! They got away from the assassins in the dark. I’m to tell everyone!”

He turned on his heels and slipped in his haste, barely catching himself, before he streaked like a panicked fox down the stairs.

“But …
Wait!
Rot take you, come back here!” Blue Heron demanded angrily as the youth raced away. For a couple of tens of heartbeats she fumed, then sagged. “She’s alive!”

Smooth Pebble exhaled in weary relief. “I’d better be about getting some food into her.”

“And I’d better be about finding the source of these arrows.”

“Will it really help?” Smooth Pebble asked.

“Probably not.” He shrugged. “But you never know what might turn up.”

“Let’s hope it’s not what you said,” she muttered darkly, expression wary. “Brilliant evil? You watch yourself, thief.”

“You, too,
berdache
. You’re too good a sort to go the way of Field Green.” He said it with levity, but nothing cut the fear in her eyes.

Thirty-one

“We had no warning. I was just rising from my litter when the arrows shot out of the darkness.” Night Shadow Star looked bedraggled and filthy, her hair stringy, the muskrat cape having lost some of its fluff. Her toned legs were mud-caked from the calves down to her feet. Somewhere she’d lost her sandals. The brown dress looked like something a dirt farmer would wear in from the field. But worst of all, the set of her eyes expressed a deep-seated fright.

Blue Heron turned her attention to the Red Wing. He looked equally unkempt, his hair matted, mud splotched everywhere. The normally disagreeable set of his jaw had softened. So, too, had his continual expression of loathing. Now his tattooed face with its lines and patterns had grown introspective. Like Night Shadow Star, he, too, reeked of a charnel house’s cloying odor.

“No shouts of warning?” Blue Heron asked. “No reason for the attack?”

“It would have been easier to bear if someone had cried out, ‘Die, you foul camp bitch.’ Instead they attacked in complete silence.” Night Shadow Star paused. “But for the gusting wind and hissing arrows.”

“We heard from your guard and the surviving porters that someone yelled, ‘Run’ and ‘Ambush.’”

“I did,” Fire Cat told them. “That’s when I grabbed the lady and jerked her backward off the litter.” His gaze went half-lidded as he added, “She wasn’t particularly pleased with the gentle and dignified manner of my assistance. Especially when I threw her kicking and screaming over my shoulder and ran for it.”

“At least I didn’t charge headlong into an open latrine, Red Wing,” Night Shadow Star shot back.

He gave her a diffident look. “You might at least warn the people living next to that marsh not to drink the water.”

Blue Heron heard the tension behind the words. The reason why Night Shadow Star had saved the Red Wing still eluded her, but her current concerns lay elsewhere. “How many of them were there?”

Night Shadow Star shrugged, but the Red Wing met her gaze, his own confident as he said, “My guess, after thinking about it, is that there had to be at least four, maybe six, total. They were lying in wait on either side of the mound base when we got there. Given the way the palace ramp and staircase extend, they had us in a cross fire, as if we were the center of the X. Pinpoint accuracy wasn’t necessary, just shoot at the screaming shadows with as many arrows as possible.”

“It worked. Field Green, three guards, and most of the porters are dead.”

“I would have been, too.” Night Shadow Star frowned into a distance only she could see. “I heard the arrow hit Field Green in the chest.”

“In the dark like that,” Fire Cat told her, “someone had to take the first hit. It was simple chance.”

“But you managed to keep my niece safe,” Blue Heron interjected, a cold thought creeping between her souls.
Just as that culprit Seven Skull Shield saved my life. And both—if we can believe Night Shadow Star—were around to do so at the insistence of Piasa.

For long moments she studied the younger woman, her memory dredging through her niece’s tumultuous childhood, her unsettled and rebellious adolescence. No girl could grow up normally in the midst of the Four Winds Clan’s fractious politics. Let alone in the Morning Star’s presence. Her grandfather, and then her brother had sacrificed their lives, souls, and bodies to provide a temporary abode for the god’s resurrected Spirit. The girl had had a special bond with both Chunkey Boy and Walking Smoke. Why shouldn’t she? No other children in the world grew up in that rarified environment that had them literally playing at the feet of a miracle.

Night Shadow Star had been a target all of her life. The Four Winds Houses—and half of the Earth Clans—had plotted, wheedled, or cajoled to elevate their status by marrying one of their young men to her. Nor had Matron Wind;
Tonka’tzi
Red Warrior; his wife, White Pot; or even the Morning Star hesitated to dangle her future as a potential prize in the political gamesmanship that was Cahokian politics.

They’d forced her into the company of her troublesome brothers—the only “safe” males she’d been allowed to associate with. And in the process, the boys had turned her into something of a feral young woman with their archery, stickball, chunkey, and club-fights.

At least until the Morning Star had been reincarnated in Chunkey Boy’s body. And then something had happened. Something more than just the sacrifice of Chunkey Boy’s souls. That, after all, had been inevitable; Chunkey Boy had willingly stepped forward, his entire life having prepared him for the moment he would surrender his body to the god.

Whatever had happened in the aftermath, Night Shadow Star’s relationship with her brothers had exploded the way a wet ball of clay blew up in a too-hot fire. Chunkey Boy, of course, was gone, his disregard for others and his dark moods consumed by the god. To Night Shadow Star it had to have been like a death; except her brother’s familiar body remained alive, visible every day as the god wore it around like a suit of clothing.