People of the Morning Star (29 page)

High Dance swallowed hard, a runny sensation of unease deep in his guts.
He took the chunkey stone out of Fast Thrower’s bed! This man walked into my palace and stood over my son’s sleeping body?

Bead’s triumphant black eyes had fixed on him, reading every thought while a knowing smile began to curl his lips. In the shaft of light spilling through the door, High Dance could see that the man’s face bore a thick layer of brown, as if to obscure the broad planes of his face.

“Ah, yes, High Chief. You’re not as thick-witted as your sister thinks you are. And just between the two of us, I really don’t care if Evening Star House ends up running Cahokia, or if you ascend the
tonka’tzi
’s chair.”

“Who
are
you?” High Dance’s souls were awash with a sudden and cold fear.

With an icy smile, Bead added, “There, now. Doesn’t matter. We’ve managed to put the mutual threats behind us so we can get on to the real problem: killing the Morning Star. It is going to be so much harder and dangerous than either of us thought. Let’s put our heads together and really think this through. Blue Heron has to go, that we already know. But now, this Piasa thing? It starts to make sense. My dead assassin Bobcat was chopped up and thrown in the river. Last night when I tried to call him back, his life-soul didn’t appear where it was supposed to. I
know the ritual.
I’ve done it twice before in the south, called dead souls into new bodies. It’s not that hard, mostly a matter of purity, blood, and sacrifice.”

Bead stopped short, his expression going slack, as if he were listening to something.

“Oh, yes.” Bead glanced at High Dance, revelation in his suddenly pained eyes. “They tell me Piasa wouldn’t free Bobcat’s soul. That somehow Lady Night Shadow Star…?”

He cocked his head again, struggling to hear something. After a slight nod, he looked as bereft as a man kicked in the gut. “But of course. I understand. Nothing comes free. She’s the ultimate sacrifice, the price I have to pay. But how can I stand the pain? I lost her once before, and it nearly…”

His face contorted. “Can I do that? Stand that?”

An instant later, his animation returned. “But it won’t be forever. I can call her souls back from the dead! Find her another beautiful body, and it will be just like it was.”

The chill in High Dance’s souls deepened. “Your warrior’s life-soul? You tried to call it? But, I mean … call it where?”

Bead gave a slight shrug. “Into a young woman’s body. Bobcat was only a Tula, mind you. But maybe the failure was due to my trying to call a male soul into a female body? But … No, no, no! It shouldn’t matter. I’ve done it before. The ritual should have worked! You
should
be able to call a dead soul to any place, and into any body you want to!”

High Dance tried to control his incredulous expression. “So … what happened?”

Bead sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, sandaled toe scuffing the packed clay. “I did everything correctly. Bathed her entire body in the blood of the farmer and his family. Sang with the appropriate vigor. When dawn came, Bobcat’s soul should have taken over her body. When I pulled the gag out of her mouth, all she did was sob and scream like a maniac. She couldn’t understand or speak a single word of Tula … Couldn’t tell me any of the things Bobcat’s souls would have known.”

“And the girl?” High Dance asked, his skin crawling as he slowly backed toward the door.

“I was so enraged … that sense of absolute frustration! You understand that, don’t you, High Chief? By the time I stopped hacking and slicing, well, there just wasn’t enough left to satiate that lust I felt while I was washing her.”

Then a slow smile spread across his lips. “Well, that’s for another day. Now, what are we going to do about Blue Heron?”

“I think it would be best if we each went our separate ways, Bead.”

The man’s knowing smile cut through High Dance’s souls like a winter gale. “Oh, no, High Chief. You have other children. Fast Throw’s younger brother White Stem and his sister Two Leaf are just as vulnerable. And then there’s Columella’s children. But for this silly rule the Morning Star instituted concerning the Four Winds Houses, they are the true heirs of Evening Star House. It’d be a terrible shame if anything happened to even one of those children, don’t you think?”

High Dance tried to swallow. It took two tries to get past the tightening knot in his throat. He took another step back, ready to …

“That’s far enough.” Bead extended his arm, palm out. “Besides, even if you ran, you’d have to get past my wolves outside. You’ll go when I tell you, and not a moment before.”

“What do you want from me?”

Bead gave him a wary smile, his eyes gleaming like angry obsidian. “Just your cooperation. Oh, and you might place the Earth Clan squadrons under your control on high alert. When I
finally
kick Cahokia into a panic, I’ll need them to maintain order while you take over.”

Twenty-three

In her palace great room, Columella hunched as she sat on in her litter chair atop the clay dais. Through half-lidded eyes, she stared uneasily at her solitary “guest.” Her palace, high atop its mound in Evening Star City, should have been her safe haven. Instead the now-empty great room left her feeling vulnerable and curiously impotent. The fire attendants, her servants and slaves, everyone having excused themselves at the Keeper’s request.

The great room with its familiar war trophies, the brightly painted red, white, and black walls decorated with shields, bows, and the giant effigy carving of Birdman behind her, radiated an inexplicable chill. The sleeping benches displayed rumpled hides and an abandoned pile of weaving that Cricket had been working on. Here and there bowls had been left behind, dropped at her command.

Clan Keeper Blue Heron—the focus of Columella’s unease—sat just to the right of the fire where her porters had placed her litter on the intricately woven, mat-covered floor. Blue Heron’s pensive eyes were fixed on the large and detailed carving of Birdman where it hung on the woven-cane wall behind the dais. The piece was an older design that many now said presaged the resurrection of the Morning Star. The depiction invoked the memory of when Morning Star had changed into an eagle and flown up into the sky world in the Beginning Times.

Columella had waited long enough. The silence had stretched her nerves to the breaking point. “Very well, Cousin, we can’t get more alone unless you rout the mice from their holes in the walls.” Columella accented her words with a suggestive eyebrow as she propped her chin in what she hoped looked like apparent unconcern.

Blue Heron took just enough time to flaunt her authority before asking, “Do you think there are more sparkflies this spring?”

“Excuse me?”

“I haven’t seen as many.” Blue Heron continued to stare at the great carving behind Columella’s elevated perch. “I can’t decide if it’s because of the weather. Warmer this year. Or is it the number of children we have running around and catching them? Used to be deer closer than a couple of days’ walk, if you’ll remember. Now hunters won’t even try to bring in fresh meat in the summer time. It takes so long to get it here that the meat sours. Too many people, too much hunting. Is it the same with the sparkflies?”

“I haven’t a clue, Clan Keeper. Somehow, I just can’t fathom you spending the time to journey to River Mounds City, be loaded onto a canoe and ferried to my side of the river, then brought up to Evening Star City, to empty my great room and ask about sparkflies.”

“Doesn’t seem logical, does it?” Blue Heron agreed. “But sometimes logic fails us, cousin.” Blue Heron’s gaze shifted, her keen eyes boring into Columella’s. “For example, it seems entirely illogical that the
tonka’tzi
would just die in the night.”

“I don’t understand. What does illogic have to do with his death? You’re not making sense.” She paused, putting the pieces together. “Unless the facts of the
tonka’tzi
’s death are not what we’ve been told.”

Blue Heron was watching her with the same intensity her namesake watched a little fish as it surfaced in a still pond.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Columella felt an icy tingle run through her guts. “And if you’re here … Ah, I begin to understand. You’re looking for the responsible person. And that leads me to assume this was no crime of passion, no spontaneous fit of jealousy. What was it? Poison? Someone sneaking up from behind with a club?”

Blue Heron lifted her chin so that Columella could see the dark line of stitches. “More like a ritual sacrifice.”

Columella’s heart skipped, and she swallowed hard. “I don’t understand, Clan Keeper.”

“The
tonka’tzi
’s throat was slit. The same was done to his wife. A second assassin was in the process of cutting my throat when a fortuitous interruption left me alive … and him dead.” She pointed a gnarled finger at the long wound. “But he came this close.”

Columella’s souls froze. For long heartbeats, she and Blue Heron sat with locked eyes.

Blue Heron broke the silence, her words measured, toneless. “The
tonka’tzi
was my brother. That’s enough reason to stir me to rage. That the assassins came this close to sending my souls to our ancestors, that makes it even more personal.”

Distracted by the queasy sensation in her bowels, Columella fought to clear her wits. Massaging her temples with the tips of her fingers was probably a mistake, but she needed the ability to order her frantic and tumbling thoughts.

She says nothing about the attempt on the Morning Star. But who is behind the
tonka’tzi
’s murder and the attempt on the Keeper?

Or was that a ploy, a careful trick to mislead her? It wouldn’t be the first time a supposed “victim” faked her own attack as a means of pointing the finger of guilt in a different direction.

Columella forced herself to take a deep breath. “Upon the graves of our ancestors, Keeper, I know nothing about any attempts on either your life, or the
tonka’tzi
’s. The House of Evening Star is
not
involved in any way in these despicable actions. I give you my word on that.”

“And your brother’s?”

Columella nodded. “The High Chief knows nothing of these things.”

“High Dance has told you so?”

Columella avoided the trap, snapping, “No! If he didn’t know the
tonka’tzi
was assassinated, how could he tell me he wasn’t involved? Stop playing your tricky little games. If he’d been involved, I would know!” She let the anger run through her, then added in a more reasonable voice. “Not to mention the fact that coming here, to us, first, is even
more
insulting.”

Blue Heron’s fixed stare hadn’t so much as wavered. “Actually, you should feel flattered. It’s a measure of your competence and innate ability, Matron. You, of all people, have the cunning, initiative, and courage to attempt something like this.”

Columella chuckled dryly, the first fingers of relief stroking through her. “And the Morning Star would just sit mildly atop his high perch and let his family be murdered and displaced?”

“Do not make the mistake of thinking the Morning Star carries any allegiance to our House just because Chunkey Boy’s host body was ours once.” Blue Heron gave her a grim smile. “From my experience, Morning Star is ultimately pragmatic.”

“As you wish.” Columella sniffed, thinning her nostrils in the process. “But in the meantime have you given any thought to the possibility that whoever assassinated the
tonka’tzi
hoped that you would come here, make your accusations, and drive a wedge between us that could not be repaired?”

Blue Heron’s dark gaze sharpened. “Indeed I have. But if our antagonist is that calculating, perhaps you, good Matron, and the High Chief—capable as you are—might be his next victims. If he’s eliminating potential threats, you’d be next.”

Columella tried to keep her lips from twitching as she considered that. “That leaves another House as the perpetrator.”

“I’ve known for years that you collect information on the other Houses.” Blue Heron pressed the palms of her hands together suggestively. “Is it possible that some bit of information … perhaps something you might have heard from one of your sources, didn’t make sense until now?”

Columella arched an eyebrow. “Would it be a crushing revelation for you to learn that you are neither loved, nor cherished, by
any
of the other Houses of Four Winds Clan?”

“Neither crushing … nor a revelation,” she muttered dryly.

“Then I have heard nothing that would lead me to suspect any of the other Houses of this particularly heinous act.”

“I’ll take your word for that.” Blue Heron pursed her lips, frowned, and then cautiously said, “Meanwhile, I want you to consider this: the attempt to assassinate both the
tonka’tzi
and me was not the first attempt to upset our world. An attempt was made on the Morning Star several days ago.”

Columella stiffened, struggling to maintain an appearance of appropriate shock.

Blue Heron added, “Have you heard anything about that? Statements of frustration? Worries about upset plans? Pointless rumors?”