The Next Skywatcher: Prequel to The Last Skywatcher Triple Trilogy Series (The Last Skywatcher, Anasazi Historical Thrillers with a Hint of Romance Book 1) (38 page)

Tut shot her a glance. “Uva! Stay here!” He made a threatening gesture to leave the contents of the pack alone, and she snarled at him.

Vingta marched ahead without looking back at the girl who now had a name, Uva. Tut followed and they barged into the lean-to hut of the old women who sold common corrugated cooking pots. They slept on mats against the back wall and Vingta made no attempt to be quiet. He threw sticks onto the dying coals and blew on them until a flame leaped into the air and lit the room. The three women sat up, covers to their throats, eyes as wide as Uva’s out in the moonlight.

“Good morning, ladies,” Vingta said, crouched by the fire, twirling a smoking stick between his fingers. Tut stood dark at the doorway, guarding the only entrance. He crossed his arms and regarded Vingta with a half-grin.

“What’s the meaning of this?” demanded the eldest, a woman Vingta remembered as having a wide bowlegged waddle.

“This man wants something,” he motioned for Tut to hand her the shard.

The eldest woman glanced at the piece Tut held out to her in an open palm. She didn’t move to touch it. “We let her set up a new stand to trade our finer ware and she started claiming them as her own. When we confronted her, she broke everything and ran off.”

Vingta looked at Tut and raised his eyebrows. He didn’t believe the woman, but it was Tut’s mission, not his.

“Ran where?” asked Tut.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. She’s a wisp of evil, that girl. A witch.”

Already persecuted for her superior art and craft. Vingta felt sorry for her, and a little protective, as if she were an abused orphan. But he’d shake that feeling as soon as he got into the canyon, made his trades, and got back out again.

“Which direction?” asked Tut. “Did she go with someone else?”

Vingta stood over the woman to make her feel threatened, like an unmannered thug would do. Just to frighten them a little. He would never really hurt them.

“I do not know what I did not see,” said the woman. “And I did not see her go.”

Vingta glared at the other two, who shrank behind their covers. He had an idea that might flush something out. “Tut here has an order from the canyon to buy everything with that symbol.” He gestured to the pottery shard.

The woman pointed her nose at Tut, but didn’t shift her eyes to him. “How much?”

“All you’ve got,” said Tut. “If they’re as good as these were.”

“We can make them.” The old woman’s eyes darted between the two men. “If the price is right.” Vingta admired the old hag’s gumption. He didn’t think she had it in her.

“If they’re as good as these,” said Tut, raising the shard, “the wives of the High Priest will shower you with riches.”

The elder woman seemed unimpressed. “What can you give us now?”

Tut patted his pockets, but Vingta held up a hand and offered the woman something. She took it from his fingers and held it in the flickering light. A shiny cube the size of a tooth.

The woman held it to her right eye and studied it, finishing with a nod. “We have a batch in the ground now. Thirteen small ones, if none of them cracked, one of those symbols on each. We can have them cooled and cleaned to you by sundown tomorrow. But we’ll need more than this.” She raised the cube.

“Don’t worry,” said Tut. “I’ll get you plenty in return.”

Vingta walked out with Tut. The first glow of the sun pearled the eastern horizon, the nearly full moon white and lonely sinking into the dark western horizon. Cooks were already moving, smoke from their renewed fires charging the air with the scent of sage.

“We didn’t get a shred of truth out of that old woman in there,” said Tut. “But you know what I think?”

Vingta shrugged. Tut would tell him no matter what he said or did.

“I think there’s no way they can make pots like this, and they’re just passing air through their loincloths.”

“You think?” Vingta enjoyed a little sarcasm of his own.

“It’s all greed and jealousy,” said Tut. “And bluster. I never saw an old potter that didn’t eye the work of talented younger ones like it’s the spew of Másaw.”

Vingta raised a finger as if he just got it. “You think
they
broke all that girl’s pots. And have her kidnapped somewhere to make more?”

Tut grinned. “We’re thinking just alike here, brother. It’s obvious. They sell all the pots around here, always have, and everybody knows it. Then this little nobody girl shows up and can make better stuff than they can. And she’s got that funny little spiral-flare design thing. That’s what drives everybody so crazy. I’d probably do the same thing. You know, make her work for me. In fact, that’s what I intend to do. I don’t want their pots. I want the girl.”

Vingta shook his head with a half-grin. Poor slow-witted Tut. He was a good man, as far as traders went. But if Tut found his prodigy potter girl, it could ruin the market for his shiny cubes.

“So you really have the wives of the canyon in a froth for these?” he asked.

Maybe he should have let Tut blunder along in his own ineffective way rather than helping him.

“Oh,
I
didn’t do anything,” said Tut. “Some pilgrim took a couple down there, and those women started wailing like the High Priest himself had passed, they want more of them so badly. I’ve never seen the likes of it.”

Tut shook his head with a strange sideways glance at Vingta, and then spit on the ground. Tut was hiding something. The poor man would make a horrible spy. The wives of the canyon may or may not be convulsing in desire for these pots, but some powerful person had sent Tut to find and bring back the girl who could make them. Probably someone who wanted to impress the High Priest. If Tut succeeded, his bag of shiny heavy cubes wouldn’t be worth much.

Vingta sighed. He couldn’t decide what to do. Help Tut and hope for some share of his trading riches, or strike off now for the canyon and take what he could get for his cubes before these fancy pots flooded the market?

Vingta stared at the moon above the horizon. Just like his prospects for getting a good price for his pretty cubes, plunging into darkness. Maybe he should find a place and sit out the fad of the new potter girl’s wares. When it waned, the canyon wives might give his shiny cubes the attention they deserved. It was like waiting for the full moon to rise again. Everything ran in cycles.

Tut shook his head. “It’s no good, though, if I can’t get that girl pretty quick. I think I’ll hide out here and watch those hags. See if I can figure out where they’re keeping the girl. Want to help?”

“What’s the hurry?”

“Things are crazy down in the canyon. Especially with that new guy up at the Twins predicting the next full moon is on the shortest night of the year. You know how they get for stuff like that down there.”

“What new guy?” Vingta knew the Twins. He had worked there as a common stone carrier for two years after he left the service of the High Priest.

“You don’t know? You really have been out of it. Old Tuwa got himself a couple of apprentices.” Tut shook his head. “Not worth much, you ask me, but he didn’t. Anyway, his top one figured it out a few moons back, and Tuwa gave him credit, and the High Priest is treating it like the most important event in the history of the Fourth World.”

“I heard they were celebrating that. But I didn’t know Tuwa didn’t make the prediction himself.”

“Thinks he needs a successor, I guess. He’s still in pretty good shape, seems to me. But what do I know? I’m just an old….” He paused and pointed to the girl, Uva, lounging on Vingta’s pack in a way that showed her legs and made her hips look wide and large and appealing. “Say, you don’t need a girl, do you?” asked Tut.

Vingta would play Tut’s game, pretend offense, but then decided to keep it simple. “No.”

“She’s cheap,” Tut said.

The girl overheard, sat up and spat at him.

“And feisty. Good hips, too. Look at ’em.”

Vingta looked at the girl, a little unkempt wench, hair all matted and cut wrong, face smeared with finger dirt. The wafting smell of cornmeal batter on hot stone from an early cook distracted him. He raised his nose and sniffed.

Tut watched him. “She can cook! Want me to strip her down so you can get a good look at her?” Tut grinned, a sight that would frighten children, his teeth were so filthy and crooked.

“No.”

Uva spat at him again.

“Aw, come on, Vingta. You’re my friend. This girl is driving me crazy. I’ll pay you to take her. You can have all thirteen of those fancy pots when I find that potter girl.”

Uva realized what was happening, and snatched Vingta’s pack. She struggled but managed to heft it onto her shoulders.

“See?” Tut asked. “She’s strong! Can carry that load of rocks for you. And when you can’t stand her anymore, you can cook her and eat her like a South man.” He raised his eyebrows while he kept his mouth closed, a modestly more appealing sight than his teeth.

“Why didn’t
you
do that?”

“Oh, well. I don’t much care for human meat. Never have.”

Neither did Vingta. The idea disgusted him, and he felt the rise of anger at how many Southern behaviors were slipping back into this world. That’s one reason he left the service of the High Priest and the new chief warrior. They were barbarians of the kind not seen in the canyon since Master Tuwa cleansed the place decades ago.

“No,” Vingta said. “No woman. I go down to the canyon floor today, make a few trades discounted by your threat of those pots, live like a human for a while instead of a coyote.” He shook his head. “Definitely no woman.” Not that one, anyway.

“You’re going down there now?” asked Tut.

“Yes.”

“How long you thinking about staying?”

“Not long. Out before the moon pilgrims arrive.” He rolled his sleeping skins and held out his hand for the girl to give him his bag, but she crossed her arms and glared at him.

“Well, you might not,” said Tut.

Rather than ask why, Vingta waited.

“Warriors down there are putting everybody to work. You know, whether they want to or not. Even if I have a big load of these pots, they’d probably throw me into the worker pits. You should see how they keep them down there now. Not like they used to.” Tut’s eyes went flat. “That runt Póktu and the stone-stacking-obsessed High Priest are getting too hard to take. This may be my last trade down there. I’m too old for this. I’ll find that potter girl and hide out somewhere until after the next full moon.”

Vingta looked around to see if anyone had overhead Tut’s criticism of the powers that be, especially calling Póktu a runt. He had not only warriors at his command, but spies and assassins as well. If the wrong people found out what Tut thought, Póktu’s men would track him down no matter where he went, fancy pots or not.

Vingta remained still a few moments, thinking. He didn’t want to get tangled up with warriors either, especially emboldened by leaders in a panic over a coming big celebration. He should’ve known they’d press everyone they could into labor gangs. And he’d heard rumors of a new fanaticism by the High Priest to build the tallest buildings in the Fourth World.

“Hey, I know,” said Tut. “Come with me. You can get to know the girl, here, better since I’m giving her to you as a gift for joining me.”

Vingta ignored the absurdity of accepting a woman as a gift. It verged on an insult. Only fathers and uncles could do that, and even then at their own risk from aunts and mothers if the girl objected. It also spoke to Tut’s desperation to be rid of her. Vingta was suspicious. Master traders were tricky. If he really had such strong demand for the pots, the girl could be useful as a burden bearer. “What about the pottery order from the canyon? Or maybe there really isn’t one.”

“Well of course there is. They’re dying for it down there. You know the wives of the High Priest, they all want dozens of them, which makes everyone else in the canyon want dozens of them, which makes…well, you know how it gets down there.” He rocked back on his feet. “Yeah, if I had three or four women like this one here loaded down with those pots, it would be worth twenty bags of your cubes. Maybe more.” He shook his head and blew a jet of air through his lips. “But I will not go back down there now. They’re getting more brutal by the day. They treat their workers like slaves. They die off right and left, and they cook and eat them.” Tut shook his head. “You shouldn’t go down there, either, my friend.”

Vingta mulled what Tut said, remembering that, in spite of his apparent slow wit, he was the most successful trader north of the canyon, and had been for as long as Vingta had been alive. Maybe Tut tried to dissuade him from going down into the canyon, hoping Vingta would trade his bag of shiny cubes to Tut on the cheap. He rather appreciated the long way around Tut took in his negotiations. But it pleased him more that he figured it out. Tut simply wanted a good trade. Low risk, high reward. And to be rid of this strange woman. That part didn’t make any sense, unless she was truly as intolerable as Tut said.

“What’s your best offer?” Vingta asked. He’d known Tut for a long time. The man traded in bluster as much as goods.

“I’ll trade this valuable girl for your whole lot.”

Vingta struggled to contain a laugh, but managed to keep his trading face. “You insult me with your offer. I, therefore, do not offer my goods for trade to you.” He spoke in the manner of formal buyers in the cool interior rooms of the High Priest’s great house. “And besides, you just gave her to me. As a gift.”

“Do you consider this girl without merit?” Tut bristled and put a hand on his war club. “Do you insult both me and the clan that made her?”

Vingta stood toe-to-toe with Tut, eye-to-eye, and hovered his hands high over his own weapons. “Yes, I insult as well the clan that bore
you
, the ground you walk upon, and the worthless offer of trade that spews from your mouth hole like the anus of Másaw.”

Uva watched them with her mouth open in horror.

Tut’s face hardened into an expression of exaggerated anger, and then he cracked a smile. At that, they both erupted into laughter like boys. They bent at the waist and put their hands above their knees and guffawed until people turned to look at them. Tut began to cough, and Vingta wiped wetness from the corners of his eyes. He hadn’t felt such a release in ages. Since his last summer at the Twins. He stood beside Tut and leaned with him against the wall still cold from the night, in the shadow of the morning sun. The girl, Uva, stood with Vingta’s pack on her back, a puzzled look on her face.