People of the Morning Star (70 page)

“Who are you?” he said through panting breath. Fatigue-clumsy as he was, he almost swamped as he lifted. Shipping his paddle, he managed to paw the long black hair out of Night Shadow Star’s slack face.

Keeping a hold on her hair, he repositioned himself amidships, found his balance, and pulled.

It took two tries before he managed to get his clublike hands under her armpits. Winded, he pulled, wondering where his strength had gone, and barely managed to lift more than her breasts from the water.

“No sleep for days, Lady. Ran all night. Fought most of the morning. Haven’t eaten. Got burns all over my back. You might have just found the limits of my oath.”

Her mouth opened and closed, water spitting out.

“Okay, I hear you.” He set himself, filled his lungs, and gave one last tug, feeling her slip up. Her rump caught on the gunwale.

It was enough. He stuffed his hand between her legs and levered her limp body into the canoe.

For a moment, he lay atop her, gasping for breath. Somehow he’d managed to tear his scalp wound open again, and rain-washed blood was streaming down the side of his head.

She wasn’t breathing, but placing his hand on her breastbone he could feel the slowing beat of her heart.

“At least I’m practiced.” He set himself, throwing his weight against her chest, watching water surge from her mouth.

“Come on, Lady. You wouldn’t want me walking free, now would you? You and I, we’ve got a lot of hate left. Can’t go wasting it by slipping off to the Spirit world, now can you?”

Again and again he pressed down. Almost capsizing the canoe, he got his knee under her rump and pressed again, hearing her throat gurgle as air passed.

“That’s it.”

He climbed on top of her, supporting her neck, pinching her nose, and placing his mouth over hers. Then, as he had in her quarters, he breathed his soul into her body.

For how long, he ceased to know or care. But her heart kept beating, and periodically she’d breathe, her cold exhalations on his cheek.

When the moment finally came, he’d just filled her lungs, then used his right hand to press it out of her. Once again he had placed his mouth to hers, blowing her lungs full of air. He raised his head, pressing on her chest, to see her eyes open and fix on his.

Then she coughed, water bubbling out of her mouth, and coughed again. As if her souls had finally returned to her body, she began to shiver, the spasms increasing until her whole body was wracked.

In relief, he dropped his head, panting as if he’d run for a hard day.

Awash in rainwater, his body atop hers, he collapsed limply and let the river carry them where it would.

Sixty-six

Bright sunlight shot a shaft of yellow through the Morning Star palace’s large doorway. Its glow helped to illuminate the magnificent great room with its spanning roof. So, too, did the crackling fire in the central hearth. Light reflected from polished copper and gleamed on brightly painted and carved wood. The stunning reliefs on the walls around them almost seemed to pulse with life and Power.

Blue Heron sat appropriately on the right of the fire, or from Morning Star’s perspective, on the left. Beside her were Columella and the dwarf, and then Sun Wing. Her niece, clothed now, might have been partially soul-dead. And who knew, perhaps Walking Smoke had completely scared the souls out of the young woman’s body. Finally, in that first rank,
Tonka’tzi
Wind sat, her head down, expression thoughtful.

In the rear were High Dance and Columella’s children, hardly at any kind of ease, and still traumatized. For all they knew, given their panicked young minds, they might have just been plucked from the stew pot and thrown headlong into the cook fire.

Still missing were Night Shadow Star, Walking Smoke, and the Red Wing. And that, Blue Heron mused, was curious indeed.

Smart man, that Red Wing. He’d been clever enough to either burn to death or vanish.

And if I’d had the sense of a head-struck duck, I’d have kept the thief in sight.

As they’d made the long march back to the Morning Star’s tall mound, Seven Skull Shield had been there one minute, plodding along, looking absolutely exhausted. And the next he’d disappeared, the warriors marching along the flanks apparently having completely missed his departure.

“Go with Power, thief.” She smiled grimly, delighted that cunning Seven Skull Shield had read the nature of their “escort” correctly.

“Why are we here?” Columella asked out of the corner of her mouth. “I didn’t do anything wrong. More to the point, my children are innocent of absolutely everything.”

“No, they’re not,” Blue Heron whispered back. “They were born into the Evening Star House. Taken to the palace where Walking Smoke tried to raise the Piasa’s souls in his own body and destroy the world. Sometimes, Matron, as you well know, that’s all it takes to be condemned.”

Columella closed her eyes and took a deep breath, the kind of action someone stilling a racing heart and trying to find balance would do.

“Why are you here, Keeper?” Flat Stone Pipe asked, his pitched voice low. “Were you part of this, too?”

“I’m guilty, all right. I didn’t catch him in time. Didn’t stop him from committing his atrocity. My niece was sacrificed at Walking Smoke’s hand.”

“You use his name. You think he’s still alive?”

“You heard the runner. They found no bones in Columella’s burned quarters. The door to your access tunnel was found open.”

Columella, voice tight, began, “Night Shadow Star—”

“Serves Piasa,” Blue Heron snapped. “If she’s with Walking Smoke, I’d stake my life that it’s for the Water Panther’s reasons and not her own.”

A conch horn was blown. A line of recorders entered from outside, walking along the west wall and seating themselves. From boxes and baskets, they began withdrawing their pots of various colored and shaped beads.

Blue Heron craned her neck, looking back at the door where Five Fists, War Claw, and party of warriors stood blocking the exit.

“My children did nothing wrong,” Columella insisted in a pained whisper. “Can I save them? Offer myself for the square before he has a chance to come to a decision?”

“For what?” Blue Heron felt her curiosity rise.

“Anything. Everything!” Columella gestured her hopelessness. “Yes, I plotted against you. We all do. There’s no secret in that. Every House in the Four Winds Clan wishes to supplant your House, wishes to serve the Morning Star.”

“And until now I did a pretty good job of keeping the lid on all of you,” Blue Heron growled.

“Quiet,” Flat Stone Pipe hissed. “The Keeper is no friend of yours, Matron. No matter what you offer to save the children, she’s awaiting judgment in the same row as you are.”

The conch horn sounded again, and Blue Heron, like the rest, bowed her head forward until it touched the matting.

She heard the Morning Star as he walked out and took his seat on the raised clay dais.

“Rise,” he called softly.

Morning Star wore a beautiful eagle-feather cape thrown back over his shoulders. The white apron suspended from his waist had been embroidered in a zig-zag lightning pattern on either side of a long-nosed Birdman image. His face was completely painted in white, the two forked-eye designs around his eyes in gleaming black. A black rectangle covered his mouth. Atop his head had been fixed a striking copper headpiece depicting the arrow-through-cloud motif; white-shell long-nosed-god maskettes covered his ears. Sturdy war moccasins clad his feet.

“Where are Night Shadow Star and Walking Smoke?” he asked softly, fixing his eyes on Blue Heron. “Tell me, Keeper.”

She touched her forehead. “I do not know, Great Lord.”

“What went wrong, Keeper? It is your job, is it not, to keep the clans safe, to keep them in line, to keep the plotting and violence to a minimum. Yet now I learn that my banished brother was able to return, operate freely, assassinate his father who was our
tonka’tzi.
He almost murdered me. You yourself will bear his scar upon your throat. He apparently subverted Evening Star House for his own purposes, and then murdered the
tonka’tzi
’s daughter, and colluded with the lady Sun Wing. All that, right under your nose.”

Blue Heron ground her few remaining teeth, aware that her ears were burning. “As those things developed, I was prompt in my reports to Lady Sun Wing”—she swallowed hard—“as the Morning Star directed me to be.”

From under her lowered brow she tried to read Morning Star’s expression. She could detect no reaction other than his long pause.

“Matron Evening Star,” he asked next. “When did you learn of Walking Smoke’s arrival in Cahokia?”

“That it was Walking Smoke?” her voice strained. “I learned that on the day he and his Tula warriors walked into my palace and seized it and me.”

“But Chief High Dance knew?”

“Not in the beginning, great Lord. I warned him. Told him that Bead was dangerous.” She took a deep breath. “Great Lord, my children are innocent of everything. If you need to punish someone, I offer myself, having done nothing to accommodate Walking Smoke. Exile them if you must, but take my life in return.”

“I didn’t ask you for your life, Matron. Such protestations smack of guilt.”

“No, Great Lord. Not guilt. But if someone has to pay, to balance the Power through sacrifice…” She couldn’t finish, but prostrated herself facedown on the matting. Her body was trembling, fear eating her alive.

Beside her, Flat Stone Pipe had closed his eyes, head down. What Blue Heron could see of his expression looked desolate.

“Sun Wing?” Morning Star asked flatly. “How long were you working in your brother’s service?”

Sun Wing, however, said nothing. She just sat; her expression as empty as last year’s seed jar. The corners of her lips twitched, her hands clenching and fidgeting. She seemed oblivious of where she sat, who she faced.

“Sun Wing?” Morning Star asked so sharply that
Tonka’tzi
Wind flinched, her downcast, sidelong glance frantically willing her niece to speak, to at least acknowledge the Morning Star’s presence.

“Sun Wing?” Morning Star demanded once more. “Look at me.”

Blue Heron swallowed dryly, whispering, “Come on, girl. At least admit you’re alive.”

Though the gods alone knew for how long, given her guilt and collusion.

“Sun Wing?” Morning Star’s voice softened. He tilted his head the slightest bit, as if disappointed. “Has she spoken to anyone? Given any hint that her souls remain within her?”

“Not to my knowledge, Great Lord,” Blue Heron offered as the silence stretched. “She’d just seen her sister sacrificed by Walking Smoke. Was apparently on the point of having her throat cut when Night Shadow Star burst into the room. It is possible, Great Lord, that her souls were frightened completely out of her body. It might be worth employing Rides-the-Lightning to see if he can call them back.”

Morning Star hadn’t shifted his gaze from Sun Wing. Those tells Seven Skull Shield had described were barely visible. The tightening of the corners of the mouth, the lifting tilt of the head.

“Squadron First.”

“Yes, Morning Star?” Five Fists called from the back, touching his forehead and bowing.

“Detail some warriors to take her to the Earth Clan’s soul flier. By my order he has four days to call her souls back into her body that I might question them.”

“Yes, Morning Star!” Five Fists was already issuing orders. Four very nervous-looking warriors trotted forward, bent, and with wary reluctance, lifted her litter as if it were host to a nest of water moccasins.

“By the Morning Star, no,”
Tonka’tzi
Wind whispered, eyes clamped shut against tears.

“Keeper,” the Morning Star asked, “if there was any lesson to be drawn from this, what would it be?”

“That we can guard against everyone but those who know us best, Great Lord.” She lifted her head, squinting as she dared to look him straight in the eye. “Walking Smoke changed the rules. He didn’t sneak back into Cahokia seeking to ingratiate himself, or to play subtle political games. He came, knowing our strengths and weaknesses … knowing our hearts and habits. And he came to destroy those who once loved him.”

He almost snorted in response, his nostrils flaring slightly, a hint of worry on his lips.

“And where is he now, Keeper? Sneaking up the stairs as we speak? Secreting himself to assassinate me in my sleep? Stirring the Powers of the Underworld to unleash disaster in our world?”

“I … don’t know.” She felt her heart sink as she stared into his implacable eyes. Then, seized by some insane impulse, she added, “But you’re aware of that. You knew all along, didn’t you? What was it? A whispering of the wind? Some voice from the Sky World that told you he’d come back? That he’d already bent Sun Wing to his will?”

She pointed, hearing gasps from around the room. “That’s why you had me climb the tower out there with you that day. That’s what you were trying to tell me, wasn’t it? That’s why you had me report to Sun Wing. You were keeping her close, watching, trying to determine who was with or against you.”

She raised her hands, knotting them into fists. “By
Hunga Ahuito
’s shadow, why didn’t you tell me?”