People of the Morning Star (34 page)

“What of the thief?” Night Shadow Star asked as she tried to hide the distaste at her sister’s fascination with the knife. “What does he add to our understanding?”

Blue Heron saw Seven Skull Shield cast an uneasy glance at the Morning Star; then the man touched his forehead respectfully. Even in the presence of the living god, he gave Night Shadow Star a lascivious grin. “I’ve been seeing to things, Lady. Whoever is behind carving, or trying to carve, Four Winds Clan throats, he’s a canny one.”

“And you know this how, thief?” Sun Wing couldn’t keep the disgust from her voice.

Seven Skull Shield was good. The only hint he gave of his irritation was the slightest tightening at the corners of his eyes. “I know it, Great Lady, because no one else knows it.”

“Why is this idiot here, Night Shadow Star? You’re the one who had the Clan Keeper find him. To what purpose?”

Seven Skull Shield, to his credit, spread his hands wide and inclined his head respectfully as he continued in a reasonable voice. “Great Lady”—he kept the sarcasm to a faint inflection—“there are people in Cahokia who make it their business to know everything that’s going on. Who is dealing with whom. Which embassies are arriving, and what Trade they bring. They know who has committed crimes, and what it is worth to either find, or hide, those people. Sometimes just knowing is worth a great—”

“Who?” Sun Wing demanded hotly. “Who
dares
infringe on the right and authority of the Four Winds Clan in this manner?”

“Half the city,” Blue Heron blurted dryly. “Which you’d know if you
ever
got out
among
the people.”

“No,” Seven Skull Shield countered matter-of-factly, “she wouldn’t, Clan Keeper. She’s who she is, and she wears that identity like face paint. Even you, Clan Keeper, as talented as you are, and knowing what you do, have no idea of the true identities of those people.”

“And you do?” Sun Wing bit off the words.

“Yes.”

“You will tell me. Right this moment.”

He glanced uneasily at the Morning Star, then at Blue Heron, and said, “I will not.”

“Enough!” Morning Star broke his silence, gesturing Sun Wing back into her litter seat as she started to rise, her face burning, eyes enraged.

“But, my Lord—”

“The thief has his place.” Morning Star waved her down, but his suddenly intense eyes were locked with Night Shadow Star’s. They might have been waging some unspoken wrestling match.

To Seven Skull Shield, Sun Wing added, “I could have you hung in a square, torture the names out of you.”

Seven Skull Shield kept his wary eyes on the Morning Star as he said, “You could do that. But I’d never live long enough to give you the names. As soon as word traveled that I was in a square, and that you wanted names, I’d be found dead within a couple of hands’ time. They’d see to it. One way, or another.”

“How?” Morning Star asked, turning his thoughtful eyes on Seven Skull Shield.

This time there was no insolence in his deep bow as he touched his forehead, and voice low, answered, “They control the homeless, the lost individuals, those with no hope. They hold sway over others as well. Even chiefs and matrons have gambling debts, owe favors, or are otherwise beholden to such persons. Their influence and authority comes not from birth, but from who and what they control.”

“Why have I never heard of this?” Sun Wing demanded, stamping her foot.

“Because you live above it,” Blue Heron replied, keeping a wary eye on the Morning Star. His gaze had gone vacant again, as if his souls were digesting this new information. To Seven Skull Shield, she added, “You were making a point?”

“Yes, Keeper.” He, too, was keeping a wary eye on the Morning Star. Smart man, this Seven Skull Shield. He instinctively knew where the danger lay. “If one of the Houses, or one of the Earth Clans, was behind the plot, one of my sources would know. A slave or servant would have overheard something. In return for news this big, a trinket would have been exchanged for the information, and it would have passed along.”

“They monitor the houses and Earth Clans that closely?” Night Shadow Star asked in surprise.

“Of course, Lady,” Seven Skull Shield gave her a knowing grin. “Information, like a good whelk-shell cup, can be sold for as many sacks of corn as the market will bear. Think about it. By knowing the very night a marriage is brokered between Hawk Clan and Bear Clan, a clever man can move a supply of face paints, lotus-root bread, smoked cuts of deer haunch, dried fish, corn, and hickory oil to the aforementioned clan’s plaza. The next morning when the matrons walk out to obtain those very things with brimming pots of Trade, who will maximize his profits?”

“And what does this have to do with assassins?” Sun Wing demanded coldly.

Fire Cat fought a sneer of disgust, turning his loathing glare from Morning Star to the younger woman.

Seven Skull Shield gave Sun Wing a slit-eyed stare of his own. “I just told you. If the clans or one of the houses were involved, someone would say something. Too much profit is at stake. One of my people would have heard something. To my surprise, they didn’t even know the
tonka’tzi
had been murdered. That’s how efficient the assassins are, and a measure of your own success.”

Blue Heron added, “Much of which we owe to you, thief, for your quick response.”

She could see that he was conscious of every change of the Morning Star’s expression, keeping track at the corner of his vision as he made a dismissive gesture. “You don’t think in the same terms I do, Clan Keeper.”

“Thank the stars for that,” Sun Wing muttered naively.

“Yes,” Night Shadow Star’s thoughtful expression turned on Seven Skull Shield, as if she saw him for the first time. “But if our sources know nothing of the assassins, and yours don’t, someone must.”

Blue Heron admitted, “I thought it might have been Evening Star House. Columella is the canniest of the House Matrons, and that cunning little dwarf of hers has a network almost as good as mine when it comes to information. While she was hiding something, she was clearly shocked at the extent of the plot.”

Morning Star leaned his head back, watching curls of blue smoke rise from the leaping tongues of flame. “
Hunga Ahuito?
Do you throw your heads back, laughing from both of your mouths?”

Blue Heron almost winced, wondering why the Morning Star would implore the great Sky Eagle now, in the middle of the night. It hinted, oddly, of sacrilege.

“Lord,” she asked cautiously, “do you have anything for us? Perhaps some intuition from the Sky World?”

He lowered his head, eyes narrowed in thought. Moments later he smiled, first at her, and then at Sun Wing. Then his gaze met Night Shadow Star’s. For moments they stared at each other, the sensation like cold rain upon the souls. Finally he said, “Like the worlds themselves, layers of treachery are laid one upon the other.”

Then Morning Star stood, at which time Blue Heron and the others bowed their heads. She reached out with a questing right arm, wound it into the clueless Seven Skull Shield’s hair, and dragged his head down toward the mat. From the corner of her eye she saw that Fire Cat had barely bowed. Given his expression, he might have had something more sour than a green chokecherry in his gut.

They all waited until Morning Star walked silently back to his personal quarters.

“Sorry,” the thief muttered as she let him up. “Didn’t know which steps to take in the dance.”

“So, what have we learned?” Night Shadow Star asked.

Blue Heron glanced at where Sun Wing sat thoughtfully, her eyes fixed on the doorway through which the Morning Star had left. Under her breath, Blue Heron whispered, “We’re in deeper waters than we thought. Let’s just hope your Piasa doesn’t drag us all down into the depths.”

Twenty-eight

Clouds had moved in to cover the night sky. Fire Cat followed Night Shadow Star’s finger as she stopped on the steps just below the Morning Star’s high palisade gate and pointed. “Look. Blue Heron’s witches are burning.”

He inspected the faint flickering light on the distant bluff. “Do you think Blue Heron’s crazy notion that those people were sacrificed in an effort to recall a soul is correct?”

“It sounds like the ritual I saw when Morning Star was recalled to fill my brother’s body. Although smaller, with fewer people sacrificed. But the savaging of the woman’s genitals and face the way the Clan Keeper described it smacks of sacrilege. No wonder Piasa is stirring within me like a wounded snake.”

“Maybe the assassin perverted the ritual?”

She shrugged, continuing down the steep and dark steps. Fire Cat curled his fingers, arms half lifted. All it would take would be the slightest shove. From this height, in the cloud-blackened darkness, with the wind sawing at them in irregular gusts, no one would expect treachery.

He smiled crookedly at her dark shape as turbulent air whipped strands of her hair back to slap at him. He made a face and let her get another step ahead, having no desire to share even that little contact with her.

“So you watched your brother become the god? What was that like, seeing him try to change himself into another person?”

“My brother’s souls were devoured when Morning Star took possession of his body.”

“Of course.” He rolled his eyes as he felt his way down the squared wooden steps.

“Why do you find this so hard to believe?”

“Lady, do you mean to tell me that after they conducted that perverted ceremony, killed all those women and men, and buried their bodies in the mound, that after that divine moment, your brother never slipped? He never gave you that old familiar wink? He didn’t move the same way? Use a secret phrase that only the two of you shared? Maybe give you that special smile a brother gives to his sister?”

“He became the god,” she said flatly. “Just like our grandfather before him.”

“Just like? No variations?”

She vented an irritated sigh as they reached the flat on the first terrace. “Red Wing, are you so jaded that you simply cannot find it inside yourself to accept a miracle? Is that why you and your kind were driven into exile? Because you had all the imagination of frozen winter stones?”

“Maybe we found the company of the overly gullible too oppressive to bear.”

They passed the guard at the lower palisade gate and started down the stairs that led to the plaza. She asked, “Do you think all Power is a sham? Or just the Morning Star?”

“After what your people did to mine? I’m beginning to wonder myself.”

She stopped short as they reached the foot of the stairs, her attendants coming forward with her litter. Field Green ordered it placed on the ground for her to mount. Four warriors took positions around the porters, wary eyes on the other parties waiting at the foot of the stairs.

Facing Fire Cat in the darkness, she slowly shook her head as she said, “I wish, for once, that I didn’t know the truth. How lucky you are, Red Wing, not to have Piasa’s shadow sharing your souls. I could almost wish I were you.”

“You wouldn’t like being me, Lady. You’d find yourself an angry knot of rage and fury. Your thoughts would be about your wives, the women you loved, now little more than bed-slaves to strange and uncaring men. You’d know that your children were murdered, and beloved relatives are dead and unmourned.”

She huffed softly, saying, “Then we are much the same, you and I. We’ve each murdered the other’s happiness.”

With that, she stepped onto her litter and seated herself. A gust of wind whipped out of the night, carrying the mixed scents of water, smoke, and the sour taint of human waste. Her gesture was but charcoal in the darkness as she waved to her porters. “Take me home.”

Maybe I do believe in Power, Lady. Only a divine presence could find humor in the fact that you and I are bound together in such a manner.

He chuckled softly as the wind batted him with bits of grass and debris. Then he took his place beside the litter as it was lifted and the party began feeling their way west along the dark avenue toward Night Shadow Star’s high palace.

“
The value of a man’s word is only as good as the man who gives it.
” The saying had been Uncle’s. He had most emphatically impressed it upon Fire Cat’s souls from the time he’d been a boy. And it meant what, exactly, in this new and worrisome circumstance?

Thinking back to the Morning Star’s palace, he wondered. How had he been able to kneel there, just back from the fire, while his absolute hatred pooled and boiled? All the while he’d watched the Morning Star where he sat on his raised dais, looking ever so thoughtful, eyes half-lidded, face so perfectly painted. The human-faced maskettes that covered his ears had given the man’s head a grotesque shape.

Granted, Morning Star played the part of a god well. But Chunkey Boy would have had his entire life to study, watching every move his grandfather made, perhaps mimicking them to learn the art of posture, gesture, and affectation. Then, when the day came, all Chunkey Boy had needed to do was adopt the persona.

But do they all believe it?

That was the question. No doubt about it, even Blue Heron—tough old nut that she was—feared the Morning Star. Nor did she betray by so much as a flicker any indication that she was talking to anyone less than the god himself. Surely she and Night Shadow Star of all people would know the truth.