It Sleeps in Me (16 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: It Sleeps in Me
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THE ENORMOUS CARVING OF BLACK FALCON GLOWED IN THE light of the two torches standing on either side of the front entrance to the Chieftess’ House. Rockfish dipped his head to the god, threw back the door curtain, and saw War Chief Feather Dancer standing guard before his bedchamber at the far end of the hall. Rockfish glanced into the council chamber and the temple before he headed for Feather Dancer. He had to make sure both chambers were empty. Slaves occasionally slept there. There were things he and Sora had to discuss in private. He didn’t want their conversations overheard.
The war chief watched him with a curiously expressionless face as he came forward.
“Feather Dancer,” Rockfish greeted. “I hope you are well.”
Feather Dancer bowed. “Well enough.”
“Now that I’m home,” Rockfish ordered, “you may go. I wish you a pleasant night.”
Feather Dancer’s eyes narrowed, and his scars rippled across his cheeks. “I will leave when the chieftess orders me to go. I stand here at her request.”
Rockfish blinked in dismay. Feather Dancer had never refused to obey one of his orders. In the past, he’d always treated an order from Rockfish with the same respect he would an order from Sora.
Coldly, Rockfish said, “Very well,” and ducked into his bedchamber.
Sora sat cross-legged on their sleeping bench with two blankets coiled around her slender waist. A glittering wealth of long black hair spread down the front of her yellow sleep shirt. She looked stunningly beautiful.
“Sora,” he said, holding the door curtain aside so that she could see Feather Dancer standing in the corridor. “Now that I’m home you may dismiss your war chief. I’ll guard you.”
Sora studied him with dark, unblinking eyes. “Feather Dancer?” she called. “Please stand guard at the front entrance. I’ll call if I need you.”
Feather Dancer nodded but gave Rockfish a piercing glance before he strode down the hall.
Rockfish stood for a moment, trying to fathom the implications, before he let the curtain fall closed. “What was that about?”
Sora leaned back against the wall with her tea cup clutched in both hands. “Hello, my husband. How was your trip?”
Her voice had a probing quality that set his teeth on edge. He’d expected a very different greeting. Contrite, perhaps, or tearful.
Rockfish hung his cape on the peg by the door and set his bow and quiver against the wall. As he slipped his pack from his shoulders, he said, “It was long and tiring.”
Does she suspect that I heard something on the trail? Maybe she knows Wink told me. Maybe she asked Wink to tell me.
Walking to the large black-and-tan basket to his right, he removed the lid and began emptying the contents of his pack.
“How did your negotiations go?” Sora asked in a low voice. “Did Tenkiller agree to send warriors to get the jade?”
Rockfish stopped in the middle of placing his extra shirt in the basket. Holding it in his hands, he recalled Wink’s warning. “No.”
His answer didn’t seem to register for several instants. Finally,
she exhaled in apparent relief, but thoughts worked behind her dark eyes. What was she doing? Casting aside old conclusions and struggling to find a new explanation that fit this information? She was very clever.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it was important to you. Did he say why he refused?”
Rockfish placed the shirt in the basket and lowered his empty pack to the floor. Before he turned to her, he caught his image in the galena-backed mica mirror that hung on the wall. His gray brows plunged down over his fleshy nose. He hadn’t bathed in days. Dirty strands of hair straggled around his wrinkled face.
He wasn’t good at lying, but he didn’t have to fake his upset. “Tenkiller agrees with you. He thinks it’s too dangerous. So. It’s over. You can stop worrying about the jade.”
Rockfish marched across the room, sat down beside her, and began unlacing his black leggings.
“Is there anything you’d like to tell me?” he said as he slipped off his right legging.
She closed her eyes and took a breath. Her voice softened. “Yes. I want you to know that I love you and I never meant to harm you. I—”
“Wink told me all about it. She said she didn’t want you to have to do it.”
Her head snapped up. “What did she tell you?”
He let his left legging fall to the floor and pulled his dirty shirt over his head. Once he’d kicked off his sandals, he slipped naked beneath the blankets. “Everything. She told me everything.”
“I doubt she told you everything, Rockfish. I—”
“Everything.” He made it sound as though it were three words, instead of one.
Their gazes held for a few uneasy heartbeats.
Sora looked away. “You have the right to hate me for what I’ve done to you, but I hope you will try to under—”
“I don’t hate you.”
She blinked. “You don’t?”
He ran a hand through his gray hair. He could feel the dust and sweat. “No, Sora. I love you very much.”
Her head trembled before she could stop it, and that, more than anything, gave him heart. “I arrived home about three hands of time ago. I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I’m certain that if my dead wife returned to me, I would do exactly what you did. I would give up everything to be with her—including you.”
Tears of gratitude traced silver lines down her cheeks.
Rockfish took the tea cup from her hands, set it on the floor, and wrapped his arms around her.
She hugged him hard. “Dear gods, you cannot imagine how I’ve prayed to hear you say that.”
He gently stroked her long hair. “I can’t lie. It’s going to take me some time to accept it, but I will, if you’ll help me.”
“I’ll do anything. I—”
“There’s only one thing I ask of you.”
She pushed away to look at him. “Yes?”
“Tell me the truth. All of it, starting with the day you met Flint. It’s not that I doubt Wink’s version of the story; I just want to hear yours.” He gripped her chin hard to stare into her eyes. “Every detail, Sora. I don’t want you to leave anything out. Do you agree?”
She nodded, but he could see the panic that clutched at her souls.
It took half the night. When she tried to skirt around the most intimate details, he knew it and demanded she tell him the truth. It hurt. But it was also a revelation. He had always known she was a woman of great passions, but until this moment, he’d never guessed the depths of her needs. Many of the things she and Flint had done to excite each other sounded brutal, almost animalistic. At one point, he was reminded of big cats coupling, the male biting the reluctant female’s neck to hold her still while he roughly penetrated her. It was … inhuman.
When dawn’s blue gleam began to lance through the smoke hole, she finished the telling.
They gazed at each other in silence.
“Thank you. For being candid,” he said, and pulled her down to the bench beside him. She pillowed her head on his chest, and her hair spread over his body like a dark blanket.
As he petted her shoulder, he said, “May I ask you some questions?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that when Flint’s soul realized you were being choked to death, he slipped inside you to fight Skinner?”
She twisted to look at him. True terror filled her eyes. She must be searching every corner of her souls, going from place to place, trying to discern any sign of his presence inside her. “Why would you think that?”
“That’s what I would do if I were a reflection-soul. I could not sit by and watch the woman I loved die at the hands of my friend. I’d switch bodies, praying I could stop him.”
“It’s possible. I honestly don’t remember a single moment after I lost consciousness.”
“Perhaps Flint didn’t want you to see what he was doing. Would you have tried to keep him from killing Skinner?”
“Probably, but that doesn’t explain my head wound, does it?”
“It could. If Skinner gained the upper hand during the struggle, he might have clubbed you trying to kill Flint.”
She nuzzled her cheek against his chest and frowned. “Then you think it was Flint’s reflection-soul? Not his shadow-soul?”
“A shadow-soul wouldn’t have fought to protect you, Sora. Shadow-souls are pure evil. They care only for themselves.”
He felt her squeeze her eyes closed. Her lashes brushed his skin. “I’m so glad you’re home. I desperately needed to talk to someone.”
He relished the tone in her voice.
“Wink was here.”
“I can’t tell her the things I’ve just told you.”
He kissed the top of her head and held her tightly. “I’m glad you told me. I can help you now.”
“Help me? What do you mean?”
Rockfish hesitated. “During the meeting later today.”
“What meeting?”
He gave her a confused look. “Didn’t Wink tell you? Sea Grass wants to meet with you. She’s asked Matron Wood Fern to be present.”
Sora slowly lifted her head to look at him. Fear lit her eyes. “What time is this meeting to take place?”
“At noon.”
She was wrestling with something. He could see the struggle in her changing expressions. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
She seemed to come to a decision.
“Rockfish, do you think …”
He frowned. “Do I think what?”
“Is it possible that none of this is true?”
The pungent scent of his sweat rose when he shifted. “You mean you don’t actually believe what you just told me?”
“No, I—I do believe it. Those things happened, exactly as I described them. But I’ve been wondering if perhaps there isn’t another explanation.”
“For example?”
She sat up and gave him a vulnerable look, clearly weighing whether or not she could really tell him.
“You
can
trust me, Sora.”
She smoothed her hand over his chest for another twenty heartbeats before she said, “What if someone I trust, someone who knows me very well, is trying to force me to step down as chieftess of the Black Falcon Nation?”
“Sora, you are greatly loved by your people. I sincerely doubt—”
“Everyone has enemies.”
Hedging, he said, “Do you have someone in mind?”
“It occurred to me that all of the things Skinner said he could have learned from … from …”
She obviously didn’t want to say the name aloud.
“Who?”
“ … Flint. Or Wink.”
His mouth curled in disbelief. “Wink is absolutely devoted to you. She would never betray you. Name one thing Skinner said that Flint couldn’t have told him.”
She seemed to be thinking about it.
Rockfish prompted, “The miscarriage, the fact that he almost killed you on the red hill, the death of the Trader, all the other things? If anyone betrayed you, it was Flint.”
Pain filled her eyes, as though the realization that her beloved Flint might have been working to harm her was too much to bear.
“Tell me something?” she said. “The day of the chunkey game, did you see Grown Bear and Skinner when they entered the village? Were they together?”
“No, but they arrived within moments of each other. I saw Grown Bear first, then …” His mouth hung open. He murmured, “
The jade.
Blessed gods! You think Water Hickory Clan is working with Blue Bow—”
“Yes.” She sighed. “Wink suggested it. She asked me what made me think that Grown Bear had come to us first.”
Rockfish forced a swallow down his dry throat. “But if Blue Bow already had an alliance with Sea Grass and Chief Fireberry, why would he send Grown Bear to you at all?”
“Maybe Blue Bow didn’t know he had an agreement.”

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