People of the Morning Star (20 page)

Seven Skull Shield scowled as he squinted at his thumbnail. “I forget the kind of men I’m dealing with sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Bent Cane said with a smile as he carried a fresh sack of shells into the building. “Unlike you, they’re
married
men. They enjoy warm beds every night.”

“Captured men,” he replied with a yawn. “Me I’m free, and too encumbered with women as it is.”

“Liar.” Meander shot him a sidelong look as he began sawing on his bow drill.

“Liar? Me? These lips have never uttered a falsehood. Your problem is that you don’t know the secret to beguiling women.”

“And you do?”

“Of course.” He dearly enjoyed the skeptical look they were giving him.

Meander suggested, “Are you going to tell us that to beguile a woman you have to be homeless, footloose, clanless, for the most part despised, as well as completely untrustworthy? Like yourself? Why would any woman you didn’t have to
pay
want anything to do with the likes of you?”

Seven Skull Shield drew a deep sigh, stood, and said wistfully, “You’ll never be satisfied with yourselves as men again. Sorry to do this to you.” With a flourish, he whipped off his breechcloth, thrusting his hips forward. “There’s the secret! Give her a choice of completely filling herself with a tree trunk like that, or one of your thin little saplings? A woman wants to know that a man’s in her! Compared to the pathetic things you’ve got hanging down over your scrawny balls? You’d better be sure and tell her when you drive it in so she doesn’t miss it!”

Seven Skull Shield gave them a knowing smile and rocked his hips to swing his oversized member. He delighted in their wide-eyed and disbelieving …

“Seven Skull Shield?” A hard voice asked behind him.

“At your will and pleasure,” he boomed, turning around and thrusting his hips at … a woman? And an older one at that. Well, sometimes Power just gave a man the right audience, the sort that … Four large warriors slipped into the shell cutter’s workhouse. The big one, a tough-looking tattooed man with a crooked jaw, cocked his head as he inspected Seven Skull Shield’s dangling glory, then narrowed an eye in disgust.

The woman, however, arched a skeptical eyebrow, lips pursed as she studied his penis. “So, he’ll be useful after all.”

“How is that, Clan Keeper?” the broke-jawed warrior asked skeptically.

Clan Keeper? Was this old …

“If we ever stick a canoe in the mud, we’ll have a tow rope.” And with that she turned, calling over her shoulders. “Bring him.”

Seven Skull Shield barely had time to stuff himself back in his breechcloth before the four warriors had grabbed him by the shoulders and were hustling him out of the bead works.

Do I dare make a break for it?

He gave the men that boxed him a furtive inspection. Each warrior was alert; they gripped their war clubs as if the weapons were old friends. Watchful as the warriors were of the passing throng of people bearing firewood, sacks of corn and sunflower seeds, jars of water, and bales of thatch, they each made eye contact when they looked his way, as if daring him to try.

Nope. Don’t risk it.
He gave them his best “I’m a charming and good guy” smile. No change of expression crossed their faces. Whoever the Clan Keeper was, she’d hired very competent men.

Which left him with his next problem: who was she? He watched in surprise as she seated herself upon an imposing litter, and eight strapping young men lifted her high. People had stopped to watch. Seven Skull Shield shot a glance over his shoulder. The bead cutters clustered in the doorway of their workshop, eyes wide.

This was a busy part of town. If he could just get a head start, there were enough people to screen him, and he knew the cluttered huts, warehouses, and workshops of the riverfront like the lines in his palm.

If you’re going, it had better be now.
The best bet would be to break for the river. It lay no more than six bow-shots to the west. As soon as they lost sight of him, he’d duck to the right behind the Deer Clan’s cane warehouse. That would put him in the workshops where they packed in tight atop the levee. The thick cluster of craftsmen depended on the river-Trade supply of shell, copper, cane, firewood, raw stone, mica, hides, horn, bow wood, and other raw materials.

He faked a cough, bending, ready to leap when a war club was laid over his shoulder. “The Keeper just said bring you,” the cock-jawed warrior reminded firmly. “She didn’t specifically say you needed to be conscious or have all your bones unbroken.”

“Why, I’m happy to accompany you,” Seven Skull Shield told him with a disarming smile. “Wouldn’t miss it.” He paused. “Um, this isn’t about Spring Flower, is it? I never touched the girl. Fact is, I was as surprised as any when she drew me into that room. It was all just ruse on her part, you know. She’d been seeing that other man. What’s his name? Short Wing something? She only lured me in to take the blame if she was…”

“Who?” the cock-jawed warrior asked.

“Not Spring Flower?” He gave the man another of his disarming grins. “Um, you wouldn’t mind if we stepped up closer to the litter? Just to ask a few questions?”

“If she wants talk, she’ll tell you. If not, you’ll follow along politely and quietly.”

For a sense of humor as limited as yours, she must have had to pay extra.
Seven Skull Shield kept his wide smile in place and hurried forward, noting that each of the guards mimicked his movements perfectly.

“Um, Matron? Excuse me.”

She glanced down from the litter, head cocking again in that birdlike manner of curiosity. “What?”

“Well, I … um, Matron, is there something I could explain to you? Surely you’ve confused me with someone else. Whatever your granddaughter may have told you, I—”

“I have no granddaughter, so perhaps you’re the one confused?”

“Ah,” he touched his forehead, bowing slightly. “Perhaps you’re concerned about the blessed statuettes from First Woman’s temple? I might have information on their whereabouts. If you would be kind enough to allow me a couple of hands of time, I believe I could manage to have them back on the altar before—”

“First Woman can take care of herself,” the woman replied sharply.

“Then, great Matron, surely there is some special service that you have in mind?”

“Actually, there is not. Nor am I a Matron.” She was riding faced forward, eyes on the bustle of traffic, refusing even to waste a further glance on him.

“Then, um, Keeper? Clan Keeper?” That’s what cocked-jaw had called her. “Am I to understand you want to hire me for a special project? Perhaps something that a woman of status such as yourself might shy from doing? Perhaps a bothersome relative? Some rival that might need a … shall we call it, a change of perspective?” That
had
to be it. “I assure you, I can be most discrete. And, subject to your instructions, not even the Morning Star himself could ever pry—”

“I deal with my own rivals,” she stated flatly. “And I certainly don’t need the likes of you to cover my tracks.”

The surety with which she said it left no room for doubt.

“I um … well, what could you possibly need me for?”

“That,” she answered caustically, “is the single question currently dominating all of my thoughts.”

At the wave of her hand—and the immediate gesture of cocked-jaw’s war club—he backed away, as puzzled as he’d ever been.

“Who
is
she?” Seven Skull Shield hissed out the side of his mouth.

“The clan keeper,” cocked-jaw growled.

“What clan keeper? Which clan? One of the immigrant ones?”

“Are you always this stupid?”

Seven Skull Shield gave the man an irritated glance of his own. “Actually, no. For the life of me I can’t figure out what I might have … I mean, seriously. She’s a clan keeper? Which clan? Who does she serve?”

Cocked-jaw gave him the look he’d give an insect. “She’s the clan keeper of the Four Winds Clan, and she serves the Morning Star.
Personally.
”

Seven Skull Shield stumbled, panic settling in his chest as he looked past the warriors at the woman perched so regally atop her litter. “She’s … You mean,
the
Clan Keeper? And she wants
me?
”

“Apparently so, but I am completely baffled as to why.”

Fifteen

With his distinctive clan tattoos covered in tawny face paint, and dressed as he was in a plain tan hunting shirt, High Dance Mankiller should have appeared anonymous. Instead he felt as conspicuous as a coral snake in a brownware bowl. He’d always been a noble. His lineage house had been in charge of Evening Star town since Petaga was overthrown and the town renamed. From the time he was a boy, he’d been trained to step into his father’s position as high chief of the Evening Star House. The position carried a great deal of authority by itself, but his father had always fumed under the yoke of the
tonka’tzi
’s rule and the unbridled authority of the Morning Star. That the latter had been reincarnated in the
tonka’tzi
’s lineage, Father had claimed, was but a matter of luck.

And now there is a way to change that.

He strolled idly along the row of vendors who had laid out blankets and erected temporary ramadas along the western edge of the great plaza. As he inspected brightly colored fabrics, stacks of brownware pottery, piles of tanned deer, rabbit, elk, and bison hides, he wondered if his walk gave him away, if his hairstyle—the thick black locks wrapped around a wooden ball and tied—looked appropriately common.

Casting sidelong gazes at the milling people who chatted, perused the offered wares, and nodded pleasantly at the vendors, he could see no one sparing him more than a dismissive glance.

Is it really this easy to become faceless?
The notion stunned him.

A cheer sounded behind him, and he turned, barely able to make out the Morning Star through the cluster of spectators watching his chunkey game. They came every day when the weather was nice. Nor did the Morning Star disappoint them, dressed in all his regalia, he descended the stairs from his palace on high. Trotting with the vigor of a yearling elk, his copper-clad lances and gorgeous white marble stones in hand, he’d meet whoever had won the honor of competing against him that morning. The bets would be wagered, and the game commenced.

No one ever beat the Morning Star. He would take his starting position, keen eyes on the chunkey court. For breathless heartbeats, he would stand, balanced, concentrating. In an instant he’d launch himself. As he sprinted forward, his right arm would extend behind him, the stone cupped in his palm. As he swept it forward and released, the stone would just kiss the smooth clay, shooting ahead like a shot. In the next pace, Morning Star would transfer his gleaming copper lance from left to right hand. Shoulder rolling back, he’d extend, and with a supple twist of his body, cast the lance after the fleeing stone.

High Dance had watched the living god’s skill in amazement, often when he—no mean chunkey player himself—had challenged the Morning Star. Invariably, Morning Star’s lance, like a thing alive would seek out the stone and impact within a hand’s distance of where it stopped.

The game was played to twenty. As points accrued ten “point” sticks were first twisted into the ground by the observing priest, and then removed until twenty points had been scored. The first player to have the last of his sticks taken down, won.

Morning Star always won. As was the tradition, the loser dropped to one knee, bowed low to expose the back of his neck, and offered the living god his head. Morning Star would raise his face to the heavens, arms held high, and grant the loser his life. As the crowd cheered his clemency, Morning Star would turn toward them and donate his winnings. At that point priests went through the anxious and milling crowd, handing out feathered wands to those they thought worthy. The wands, in turn, would be exchanged for one of the wagered items which generally included fine bowls, beautiful capes, decorative blankets, and the like.

“Does he ever lose?” an accented voice asked at High Dance’s shoulder.

Startled, he almost reacted like High Dance Mankiller instead of a common farmer. But, catching himself in time, he made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “He is the Morning Star. How could the god lose?”

The man who’d stopped beside him was young, muscular, his face darkened with ash to obscure his tattoos. As tall as High Dance, he had the characteristic look of a noble. Instead of wearing his hair up, a single thick braid on the left side of his head hung down over his left breast. Now the man crossed his arms, one foot forward, and said, “Thank you for meeting me.”

“Do you have a name?” High Dance asked, keeping his voice low as he glanced around at the other spectators. They might have been but two casual strangers meeting amid the slowly moving throng inspecting the Trade goods the merchants had brought in.

“You can call me Bead.”

“Just Bead?”

“For the time being.”

“And what did you wish to speak to me about?” A tingling of unease began at the bottom of his spine. This could be a terrible trap, some machination of Blue Heron’s. She’d been known to attempt such things in the past.